It Was Thursday
by Mc Parrot
Summary: Danny's heart leapt as with no warning, Steve drew his weapon and proceeded to shoot the crap out of the laptop and the desk it was sitting on, screaming blue murder.
1. Chapter 1

Written for Steve/Danno Slash Spring Fling

Prompt, Anon,  
Steve for whatever reason, has an argument with Danny that leaves both men wounded and feeling all kinds of bad. All of this leads to Steve disappearing into the mountains of the island for a few days with clearing his head in mind. But what happens when Steve doesn't come back after the couple of days he told Chin he'd be up there. Cue Danny charging head first into the mountains to find his crazy Navy Seal, wherever he is and whatever state he may be. Humor and Angst together would be perfect.  
-H-H-H-  
I couldn't imagine what the boys could argue about that could cause this to happen, but, the scenario I did come up with grew and grew and grew. I was terrified the show might josh me before I could get to post, but I've been lucky. We've got angst a plenty. Humor, not so much. I hope the prompter likes it anyway.

An enormous thanks to my beta/Americanism checker Ellie_Pierson. Thanks hon.

Part One

It was Thursday. A dull, boring, dreary Thursday. For once Five 0 had no outstanding cases, their paper work was up to date and there really was… nothing… to… do. Chin and Kono had somehow managed to quietly disappear mid-morning and Danny hadn't even missed them until lunch time. Steve was ensconced in his office doing something on his lap top. From the flickers of light and the very limited view Danny had of his screen (the top left hand corner) it did appear he was actually researching or looking something up, rather than playing games.

There was no real reason for Danny to still be here, other than a vague feeling that because Steve was here he should be too. A bored Steve McGarrett with time on his hands was a potential for disaster. He was probably studying the schematics of a bomb that could be built from baking powder and the innards of a TV set. The citizens of Hawaii needed to be protected from such things and that protecting was what Danny was doing. So he told himself.

The sad thing was he had nothing else to do and nowhere else to be. Danny was watching Steve and playing Mine Sweeper.

He was deep in concentration with only three mines to find while a full ten seconds ahead of his best time in the advanced level when a crash and a shout made him look up. Steve had shoved his chair violently backwards, colliding with the wall. He scrambled up, staring at the desk as though it had suddenly morphed into an anaconda. Danny's heart leapt as with no warning, Steve drew his weapon and proceeded to shoot the crap out of the laptop and the desk it was sitting on, screaming blue murder.

"Jesus!" Danny was in the doorway to Steve's office before he could think, before his rational brain could scream, 'mad-man-with-a-gun-shooting-up-the-office-take-co ver.'

"Steve. Fuck. Steve. Stop."

Steve stopped, but that may just have been because the clip was empty. He was sucking in air like he'd run a mile, his face white, eyes wild. He hadn't given up on destruction. Grabbing the desk chair by its back he swung it, crashing the wheels into the book shelves and cases. The sound of crashing glass drowned out the roaring in Danny's ears as he stood there gob smacked, watching Steve go completely berserk, trashing the office with single minded determination.

Danny held out his hands, but it was as much about putting some distance between them as it was about trying to soothe Steve. 'Put it down. Come on Steve, put it down.' Steve kept on smashing, swinging hard, the chair little more than twisted metal and plastic now. There was no glass left in any of the cabinets, the precious ship models destroyed. Danny had no idea what was behind the rampage and had no idea how to stop it. The noises tearing out of Steve's throat were more wounded animal than human.

"Babe," Danny beseeched, helplessly.

Steve was tiring, the rush of destructive energy slowing. Danny crept closer. With a hoarse scream Steve turned and hurled what was left of the chair at the window. Danny instinctively tensed, waiting for the crash of shattering glass, but these windows were storm proofed acrylic. It didn't break and the chair bounced back into the room.

And that derailed things. "Fuck." Steve stood in the middle of the chaos, breathing hard, fists curled, body tense. Danny had seen something like this before, back when he was a kid, on the New Jersey turnpike. There'd been a horse trailer with a steer inside it. Why someone was taking a big cattle beast on a ride in a horse float he had no idea, but on the New Jersey turnpike, about as far from a cattle ranch as you could imagine, some truck had T boned the horse float and the whole thing had rolled and the steer got free. When Danny and his Dad drove past, the animal was standing in the middle of three lanes of stopped traffic, absolutely terrified, hurt and furious. Its eyes had shown white all the way around the edges, its breath snorted out through its nostrils in gusts of steam. It had been wild and frightened and incredibly dangerous. He'd heard later on the news, that it had damaged a good dozen cars before animal welfare officers shot it.

Steve looked just like that steer.

"Hey babe." Danny edged forward.

Steve pushed past him and raced out of the room.

"Shit."

H50H50H50H50H50

Danny was on Steve's tail as he roared down the stairs. Steve's legs were long but the stairs slowed him enough that Danny thought he had him. Right up until he was racing through the foyer and he saw the frightened face of Keiko, the building's receptionist, peering up from behind her desk and heard the police scanner radio announcing a SWAT team en route to the Iolani Palace.

"Shit."

He stuck his head around the office door, hating having to stop when Steve was fleeing as if the hounds of hell were after him. "Tell them to stand down. HPD. It's all right." Keiko's kohl rimmed eyes were huge. "The ah… incident. Shots fired… Upstairs. It's ahh… It's okay. It's resolved. No harm done. Back up not required. HPD doesn't need to come." Steve was out the front door and disappearing into the parking lot. "Dammit. I have to go."

By the time Danny made the outside door Steve was nearly at the Camaro. No way Danny could catch him. He grabbed his phone and dialed Steve's number. Moments later he saw Steve's hand reach into his pocket, come out again. Without even looking at it, he heaved the phone as far away from him as he could. The next moment he was in the car and peeling out of the parking lot, turning right and merging with the traffic. Two blocks down, there was an intersection accessing all the major routes through Honolulu. Steve could be heading anywhere and Danny didn't have a clue where he was going.

"Fuck." Danny doubled over, fear making him weak. "Fuck. Fuck Fuck."

He glared at the Silverado, lonely in the lot. He had keys for it but they were back in his desk, not on his ring, like Steve had the Camaro keys on his.

"Chin?" he stabbed at his phone.

"Yo Brah." Chin sounded relaxed and happy.

"Are you near a computer?"

Danny's voice obviously registered with him and Chin sounded all business. "I can be. What's up?"

"Good." Danny charged back up the stairs. "I need you to access our servers. I need to know what Steve was looking at on his computer. I need…" His eyes were drawn to the destruction in Steve's office.

"Danny. What's wrong?"

Sick dread churned in Danny's stomach. "Steve's lost it Chin. He shot the shit out of his computer."

"What?" The shock in Chin's voice wasn't surprising.

Danny sank into his chair, yanked out drawers looking for the truck keys. "Something triggered him Chin. Something shocked him so much he shot the shit out of the laptop, trashed the room and took off out of Dodge. I've never seen anything like it. He was … it was like…" God Danny didn't know what it was like. "He was completely checked out. He was so angry and he was hurt and… he was so lost. It was bad. And scary. He took the Camaro Chin. He left the Silverado in the parking lot."

Chin got it instantly. "So he's loaded for bear?"

"Exactly. There's a whole arsenal in that car because that's the vehicle we take on call outs. We need to know where he's going. He's tossed his phone."

"And who he's going after," Chin said soberly

"Yeah. That's the scary bit."

"You have tried the car's GPS?"

"Fuck." Danny grabbed for the computer mouse. And that, right there, was an indication of how freaked out Danny was by Steve's break down. Steve might have tossed his phone, but the car still had its GPS and Danny had forgotten.

Danny's hands were shaking enough to make it difficult pulling up the trace. The only good thing with Steve being so out of it was that he wouldn't have thought to disable it. "He's on the Punchbowl, could be heading for the freeway. He could be going anywhere. I'm going after him." Movement caught his eye and suddenly an entire SWAT team in full tactical gear was storming through the doors. His heart sunk. "Oh fuck." He wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

"Danny?" Chin asked anxiously as Danny put the phone down.

"Just hold on," he told Chin. "Bit of bother here to sort out."

Danny put his hands up. "Five Oh," he shouted at the guys with the guns. "Stand down." Hands up and open he waited for the assault team to approach. "Whoa. Whoa. Stand down." Moving slow and steady he turned to show his badge on his hip. "Detective Danny Williams, Five Oh. There's no threat. Stand down." The guns lowered but were still at the ready. "Didn't I tell Keiko that there was no threat?"

The leader, a large well-muscled guy pulled his hood up. "Is that the receptionist?"

Danny nodded, shook the guy's proffered hand.

"She said you looked stressed, maybe under duress. You and Commander McGarrett." He looked at Danny sideways. "Are you under duress Detective?"

"No. Yes." Danny couldn't help running his hands through his hair. "Yes I'm under duress. I've got a case going down, things are time critical and I need to be out of here. If you'll excuse me?"

"What happened here?"

Danny cursed glass walled offices. "What happened here?" The need to move, to follow that dot on the screen was making Danny itch. Steve was now on the Lunalilo freeway heading east. "Yes. Yes we did have an incident. Okay? Commander McGarrett was demonstrating how to… how to…Fuck... Fireworks. How to kill people with fireworks. Okay?"

The leader wasn't buying it. "Where is the rest of your team Detective?"

"The rest of my team?" He swung his laptop around, stabbed at the screen. "That dot there, that's Commander McGarrett. He's expecting me to be following right behind him, backing him up when he arrives." He turned and stabbed at the phone he'd placed on the desk before putting his hands up. "Chin Ho Kelly is on the other end of that phone. Say hello, Chin."

"Hello," Chin said cheerily over the speaker.

"And Kono Kala…"

"Is right here Boss," Kono's voice came over the phone's speaker too, cutting him off, "Working on that search you asked for," and there was something in her voice that made Danny's blood freeze. "We got it. We know what he was looking at."

"Hang on a minute," he told Kono. "It's a case," Danny told the SWAT leader. Trying to maintain a calm exterior he turned off the speaker and tucked the phone against his ear. "I have to go. Sorry for the bother, but you know, thanks for coming." He pocketed the Silverado keys, pushed through the crowd and walked out the door.

He waited until he was on the stairs and alone. "Tell me." He picked up speed, the sense of urgency increasing with every step.

"Jesus Danny," and it wasn't like Chin to swear. Ever. "I'm not surprised Steve freaked out. This is bad Danny. Really bad."

"What? For god's sake, tell me." He fumbled the key into the big blue truck's lock, yanked open the door.

"Steve was looking into Wo Fat," Chin said ominously.

"Nothing new there." He had the phone back on speaker as he reached down to wrestle the seat forward.

"He called up his DNA profile; then ran a search for a familial trace."

Danny didn't know why Steve would do that, but it didn't seem too off the wall so far. Unless… "He found a match? Someone related to Wo Fat?"

"Yes." Chin seemed reluctant to tell him.

"Who? Who is it? Someone we know." That last part wasn't a question.

"Oh god, yes," Kono breathed.

Jesus, and now Danny got it. "It's Adam isn't it?" Adam's fancy house was on the eastward side of the island and Steve had never trusted Adam's turn away from the dark side. "Oh Kono I'm so sorry."

"It isn't Adam." Chin's voice was gravelly. "Steve didn't just look through the criminal data bases, he did a wider search."

"Chin, you're killing me here." He was reluctant to start the truck until he'd heard what this was all about. "Just come out and say it. Whatever it is."

"He found himself."

"What?" He couldn't have heard right.

"Danny, that's what Steve found out. Steve is related to Wo Fat. Closely related. They share fifty percent of their DNA."

Danny felt like all the breath had been punched out of him. "Fifty…? Oh fuck." Steve's response suddenly made so much sense. He cranked the starter motor and wrenched the vehicle into gear. "Doris?"

"Yeah," Chin agreed.

"He's heading for Doris." Danny knew it with absolute certainty. "The state he's in…" Danny wanted to drive across the obstacles between him and the exit to the street. Forced himself to steer the huge vehicle through the rows of cars before hitting the lights and siren and gunning it as he got onto the road. "Doris has been staying at Steve's since the break in at her place. I won't make it in time."

"I'm getting my bike," Chin told him. "I'll head across the waste land on the point. Call her; tell her to get out now. Don't say why. Just get her out. Tell her to head up the beach and I'll pick her up at the point. Steve's just made the Kalanianoale highway. Call her now." Chin hung up.

Danny hit the freeway and with lights and sirens going, took off. The Silverado was surprisingly responsive and easy to drive for such a large vehicle.

Doris picked up on the fourth ring. "Danny?" She sounded cautious and surprised to hear from him. It was probably the second time he'd rung her ever, so that wasn't surprising. "Do you need something?"

"Your life is in danger and I need you to get out of the house." Now he was finally moving, finally acting, he felt surprisingly calm. "You need to leave now. Drop what you're doing and head to the beach. Head along the beach to the point and Chin will pick you up there."

"What?"

"Now Doris."

"Okay. How long have I got?" God, they kept forgetting that this woman was a professional.

"Minutes," he said tersely.

"Lucky I've got my trainers on then," she joked. "Keep talking. What's going on?" He heard a door open. "I'm out and on the beach." Her voice wasn't so steady, she was running. "Why are you calling? Where's Steve? Is Steve okay?"

Something in Danny broke. "No. Steve is not okay. Steve,' he hissed, "is who you're running from."

"What?" He knew she stopped. "What the hell are you playing at? What's happened?"

"Steve has just found out about his brother," Danny told her, "And he did not take it well." He felt completely cold. He executed a crazy passing maneuver around three slow trucks, and nudged the accelerator closer to the floor, desperate to get to his partner. "He's hurting Doris, really hurting and he's crazy like I've never seen. I'm thinking matricide." Danny's jaw was clenched so tight he could barely speak. "I'm not doing this for you. I don't care if you rot in hell, but Steve and prison aren't a good mix."

"Danny?"

"Run Doris. For fuck sake, run."

H50H50H50H50H50

The Camaro was sideways across the end of the driveway, front fender tight in against the flowery creeper on the fence. The trunk was open and as Danny jerked to a stop behind it he could see that the lock box in the trunk was open too. That was all he needed to know.

"Steve!"

He was fifteen minutes at the most behind Steve. The front door was open and Danny dreaded what he was going to find when he got through that door. For everyone's sakes he hoped Doris was miles up the beach and Steve was trashing the house inside. He wanted to charge in, screaming for Steve, but just in case he and Doris were in there having an armed standoff, he needed to go in quiet and slow. He didn't want to startle anyone.

He knew as soon as he got inside that there was no one there. It was too quiet, too still. Even so Danny rapidly cleared the ground floor. Creeping through the garage gun drawn gave him an incredible feeling of déjà vu. An acrid scent of vomit in the kitchen momentarily brought him up short.

Upstairs or outside?

Since he was close to the door onto the lanai he went outside. He couldn't see anyone on the lawn. Down on the beach he couldn't see anyone either, not close anyway. There were people miles up the beach, too far away to see who they were. He had no way of telling if one of them was Steve, tracking Doris along the sand. If he wasn't though, where was he? As far as he could tell, there was no-one swimming in the bay anywhere either.

He ran back inside, hastily checked the upstairs rooms, checked the nasty damp storm cellar and still came up blank. There was a half empty coffee cup on the desk in the study next to a laptop that had put itself on standby, evidence of Doris' hurried leaving. And only one sign of Steve.

Danny found himself staring at the disgusting mess in the kitchen sink and trying to think like Steve. He turned on the water. He assumed Steve would have entered the house, cleared it as Danny had done and realized that Doris wasn't here. Danny had no idea what would have gone down if she had been. He hoped Steve wouldn't have shot her outright, if only because he'd have wanted answers from her first. But she wasn't here and he'd probably relaxed just enough for his stress response to catch up with his stomach. He was wired, shocked, his entire world turned upside – again, and the fight he'd been girding for hadn't happened, leaving him at a loss.

He'd stood right here, shocked, distressed. Or had he been out in the lounge, racing back to the sink when he realized he was going to be sick? Danny grabbed a wooden spoon out of a container on the bench and forced some of the chunks down the drain, trying not to gag himself. His heart broke a little bit.

But after that, what had he done then? Where the hell was he? "Steve?" he yelled at the top of his lungs, but there was no reply.

So, Danny mused, off his head, but highly trained. Steve had to realize that Doris had been tipped off, had only just left ahead of him. He wouldn't know where she'd gone, except that it had to have been on foot.

Had the fight left him or was he still on the trail?

He heard a car pull up, then moments later the tip of Kono's rifle preceded her through the front door. "Chin's got Doris," Kono said when she saw him. "She's fine. Where's Steve?"

"Not here," Danny said tersely. "Your guess is as good as mine." He nodded at the weapon "You want to take your scope and see if you can see if he's trying to track her up the beach? Because that's really not a good idea. He's packing more weapons than Rambo."

"Danny. Why's the water on?" Kono jerked it off, narrowly averting a major flood. "Oh yuck." Chunky bits had blocked the drain. Goo was swirling in the sink like a revolting soup. This time Danny retched, is own adrenaline dump making him queasy without any added stimulation.

The sudden roar of an engine made them both jump.

"Son of a bitch."

"Did you check the garage?" Kono shouted.

"Yes, I checked the fucking garage?"

The door to which was now locked. "Shit." He barreled into Kono as he backtracked and then they tore through the house and out the front door in time to see the Marquis fish tailing out the gate. Danny raced for the Silverado, then changed direction. Kono's car was blocking them all in. That was when he noticed her driver's door was open and… "Fuck! Steve you fucker," he yelled at the already long gone muscle car. The ignition of Kono's car had been yanked out of the panel and the wiring slashed, probably with that nasty hunting knife Steve kept strapped to his leg.

"Oh Jesus." Despair and fright were making his legs tremble and he sank down onto the gravel, leaning back against the car.

Kono was staring at her dashboard, aghast. "Why would he do that?"

"He doesn't want to be followed," Danny dropped his head into his hands. He wanted more than anything for the day to reset to lunch time and he'd suggest that he and Steve follow Chin and Kono's example and head off surfing or something. He was never going to leave a bored Steve alone with the internet ever again.

"Not even by us?" Kono sounded lost.

"Obviously."

H50H50H50H50H50


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two

It was nearly two days before they got a lead on where Steve had gone. Catherine's satellites spotted what could be the tail end of a Mercury Marquis showing under trees near the start of the summit trail in Ko'olau State Park. Danny kicked himself and wondered why it hadn't occurred to him to look there. Mainly he was just insanely pleased that Steve hadn't run amok with weapons in downtown Waikiki.

As he'd told Danny, the day he'd dragged him up to the petroglyphs, he used to go there with his Dad. And even though their own trip hadn't ended particularly well, it was one of the few places on the island where nothing had sullied Steve's happy memories.

They'd moved Doris out of Steve's house of course. Actually, she'd moved herself. Taken herself off to wherever she'd been hiding out when she first came to Hawaii and let them all think she'd flown off into the wide blue yonder. Just after she'd NOT shot Wo Fat when she had the chance. Well that all made sense now anyway.

Danny had also been busy putting out fires, as thanks to the SWAT call out, there was no way to hide the fact that Steve had shot up his office. Governor Denning was extremely concerned about Steve's mental health. So was Danny, but if he told the Governor that, Steve would never work again. Danny felt he had no choice but to tell Denning what had sparked the rampage and the man had been both hugely sympathetic and appalled in equal measure. Danny didn't let on that Steve was MIA, just hinted that he was taking some time off to sort things out. He actually concurred wholeheartedly with the Governor's order, couched as a request, that Steve seek psychiatric treatment before returning to work. Danny was going to make damn sure that happened. He just had to find him first.

That was how he came to be hiking, alone, up the Ko'olau trail, sweating in the heat and cursing Hawaiian humidity, bird life, plant life, mud and particularly bug life that was making his life a misery. It seemed much further and quite a bit steeper than when he'd bounded up, well over a year ago, nearly racing his enthusiastic and happy partner. The Marquis was indeed parked in the shrubbery, well hidden from casual eyes near the start of the trail. So, more than likely, Steve was up here somewhere, but it was a pretty big park. Danny knew that if Steve didn't want to be found he hadn't a hope in hell of spotting him. Hell, Steve had managed to evade him in the small ¼ acre of his home and garden. The state park was hundreds and hundreds of densely forested, steeply sloped acres.

Danny had to hope, that by now, Steve was ready for company.

If he didn't find him Danny didn't know what he was going to do. If it were any other AWOL, heavily armed and seriously disturbed military man, there would have been an APB out on him days ago. Steve was potentially a danger to himself, and Danny didn't want to follow that thought through, and maybe even a danger to others. He'd cracked the other day. There was no telling whether in the interim he'd put himself back together or if his hold on reality had got even looser.

The tramping pack on Danny's back was heavy and chaffing against his lower back while the shoulder straps seemed way too tight. The pack got heavier and lumpier as he struggled up the hill but it was a good distraction from his troubled thoughts. He was unarmed. He figured if Steve decided to do him in, he would never see it coming. Having a gun wasn't going to help. And he couldn't anyway, no way, no how, not even in self-defense, shoot a weapon at Steve. He just couldn't.

He finally struggled up to the plateau with the view down the valley-of-the-unchanging-view that Steve had raved about. With a sigh of relief he dropped the pack and threw himself down on the grass. He pulled out his water bottle and a granola bar and waited for his breathing to even out. He was tired. He'd spent the last two nights at Steve's place, just in case he came back. Because he was sentimental like that, he'd also slept in Steve's bed. He'd thought it might help him sleep, but it hadn't. His busy and paranoid brain concocted more and more bizarre scenarios of everything from the next few hours, to a life time, with Steve missing but a potential threat to his mother. When he did sleep, his dreams were far worse.

The quiet and the warmth of the afternoon were soothing. Leaning back on the pack he found he did appreciate the view. It was spectacular and there was nowhere else in the world that looked like this. Steve loved it here.

Danny started awake when he slid sideways. "Huh." Unbelievably, he must have fallen asleep. He was groggy and disoriented, his mouth dry and a headache forming. It was also at least an hour since he'd sat down. He looked around wildly, hoping against hope that Steve would be somewhere close, watching him, but he was alone. The disappointment struck deep, he'd really hoped, deep down, that Steve would know he was in the jungle and come to him.

It was nearly four o'clock. He had enough gear with him to stay the night if he had to, although he was really hoping he wouldn't have to do it alone. He decided to head up to the petroglyphs and see if there was any sign Steve had been there. There'd been a flat area there where he could camp. He took a good drink of water and shouldered his pack.

Half an hour later he was questioning his own sanity. Steve had had two days head start. He could have made it to anywhere on the island by now. Danny's head was throbbing and sweat was making his armpits chaff. He was pissed off at the whole world and the McGarrett shaped hole in it in particular. This part of the track seemed to be longer than he remembered and he was starting to get really worried that he'd taken a wrong turning somewhere. At least this trip he was carrying a sat phone and wouldn't have to climb to the summit to get a signal on his cell.

"You sound like a herd of buffalo coming up the track Danno," Steve said over his shoulder and Danny was incredibly pleased with himself that he didn't jump.

"We have buffalo in Hawaii?" he asked.

"Not wild ones. No."

"So how," he asked, turning enough to see Steve, "would you know what a herd of buffalo coming up this trail would sound like?"

Steve stood there, hands spread out from his sides with a what-the-fuck kind of look on his face. "It's conjecture Danno. Okay? I'm guessing what a herd of buffalo would sound like. All crashing and banging and huffing and blowing." His face spread into a slow smile and dammit Steve looked good.

Well no actually, Steve didn't. He looked tired. Scrub that, he looked truly exhausted, dark circles under his eyes and a pallor to his skin that Danny really didn't like. Nearly overnight he'd dropped weight again, the planes and angles of his face showing through a scurf of stubble. But the smile he gave Danny was genuine and his eyes had lost the crazy.

"Babe." And when Danny held his arms open for a hug, Steve moved into them without hesitation.

Steve dropped his head on Danny's shoulder, wrapped his arms around his torso, under the pack, sighed and settled in. He was heavy and smelt a little funky but Danny hugged him tight, squaring his legs to take the weight and placing a hand on his head, here for as long as Steve needed him. Slight tremors were running through Steve's body, his hands clenching and unclenching in Danny's tee shirt, low on his back. The last time he'd seen Steve so undone was about a year ago, in the bad times when things were spiraling downhill in the aftermath of the trip to Korea. And how fucked up was that, that Jenna Kaye and her fiancé had died and Steve had been kidnapped and tortured, by his **brother**, seeking information on **their** mother!

As Danny stood there, holding his partner it occurred to him to wonder what it was that Wo Fat hadn't known? Did he know Doris was his mother, but not known she was Shelburne? Or both? He could bet Steve had spent the last two sleepless nights working that idea to death too.

"Babe?" Danny didn't want to be the first to let go in a hug, but Steve was resting more and more weight on him. They were going to fall down soon. He pushed back slightly. "You got a campsite in this jungle somewhere?"

'You're not going to make me go back?"

"Not if you don't want to. I'm just here to make sure you're okay. When you go back, that's up to you." Danny grinned at him. "I brought bacon."

Steve's campsite was in the trees, hidden from aerial spying, on the edge of a bluff. He'd obviously brought some gear with him, creating a bivouac out of a tarpaulin which was itself camouflaged with greenery. Danny didn't even see it at first, until Steve pulled a branch out of the way. He had a sleeping bag, a cooker and a pack sitting in the space. In front of the camp the land flattened out in a small shelf, high up on the ridge line. The view was spectacular.

"Wow," Danny said, dropping his own pack beside Steve's. "This is awesome. Your Dad bring you here?"

Steve sank down onto the grass, a small smile on his lips. "Yeah, we found it one year, exploring off the trails a bit. He was teaching me to track. We always said we'd come back and camp here sometimes." The smile turned a bit sad. "We never did."

"It's like King Kong's nest."

Steve smiled properly. "Yeah. It kinda is." He made grabby hands. "Did you mention bacon?"

Danny started hauling gear out of the pack, pleased now that he'd bothered to bring it all. "Yeah. I did. And I've got eggs. And," he waved a packet, "I've got pancake mix."

"Need to teach you about packing light," Steve muttered.

"This is not about survival in the wilderness," Danny told him. "This hike is about providing succor for a friend in need. And just for the record, I'd much rather do this than visit you in a mental ward." He looked at Steve lying back on the ground. He looked completely wrecked. "What have you been eating? Did you bring food?"

"Got some MREs." He put his arm over his eyes. "Not very hungry though."

Danny tried to keep his voice light. "Hungry for pancakes and bacon?"

Steve grinned under his arm, but his throat worked before he answered. "Yeah. I might manage."

"I'm surprised you're not eating roots and berries, or cockroaches or something. Do they not have pineapple trees this high up the mountain?" Danny prattled as he pulled out the pan, mixed up the pancake batter and started cooking. His partner seemed content to leave him to it. Danny's heart broke just a little bit, because he'd never imagined that Steve would ever leave him alone with a camp cooker and not try to take over.

They didn't speak of anything important until they'd eaten; conversation relegated to Steve's heartfelt, "I love pancakes and bacon. Did you bring any syrup?"

"Of course I brought syrup," Danny told him, fishing it out of the pack and continuing grumbling about Hawaii in general and Hawaiian mountainsides in particular.

When Steve had licked the last of the syrup off his fingers he lay back down on the grass with a sigh. "I can't believe you did that," he told Danny.

"What?"

"Carted all the makings for bacon and pancakes up the mountain," Steve swiped the heel of his hand across his eyes. "For me."

"You'd do the same for me."

"You my friend, would not be up a mountain."

"No," Danny agreed. "Not the first place I'd think of running. But you'd probably follow me all the way back to Jersey if I did pull a stunt like this. Admit it."

"Not a stunt," Steve said flatly.

"I know babe." Danny wiped out the pan with a wet wipe. He wasn't wasting precious drinking water on dishes. "Personally, I think you did the right thing, coming up here. And I for one am pleased that you didn't take it into your head to blow something up, as a way of letting off some of your frustrations."

Clouds were starting to pile up over the ridge line. Towering white cumulus, fluffy and soft against the blue tropical sky. In an hour or so they'd probably turn dark and produce thunder and rain, as was the habit of the weather here at this time of the year. Steve rolled onto his side, facing away. "Don't joke Danny." And oh, Danny didn't like the implications of that.

"I've got a sat phone with me," he told Steve. "I need to ring Chin and let him know I've found you and that you're all right."

Steve's shoulders shrugged. "Do what you have to do."

"I'm only calling Chin, and the only people he'll tell are Kono and Catherine. Okay? Everyone is really worried about you."

"Whatever."

Chin would also tell Doris too, but Danny though it best not to mention that. Doris was chaffing at the bit to launch her own search and rescue mission and that really couldn't have a good outcome. At least if she knew Steve was okay she'd be forced to back off.

Assuming Steve really was okay. Danny reported in to Chin, all the time watching as Steve pulled himself into a smaller and smaller ball. He didn't look okay. "So I'll stay up here at least tonight," he told Chin. "I'll phone in tomorrow and let you know what I've decided to do after that. Yeah?" He knew Chin would pick up as much from what he didn't say as what he did. He tucked the phone carefully back in his pack.

"Steve?" He approached carefully. "Babe? What's wrong? Are you okay about me staying the night?"

"Ate too much," Steve muttered, and Danny felt a wave of relief, because Steve's nervous tummy he could deal with. He sat down next to him, lifting his head to pillow it on his thigh. He stroked his fingers through his hair. "You gonna barf?"

Steve shuddered. "Trying not."

"Good. That would be a hell of a waste of good bacon."

Steve snorted. He might have sworn blue murder that he didn't get a squirmy stomach when he was upset, but evidence proved otherwise. The dramatic weight loss of the previous year, when Wo Fat was running rings around him, said that yes, food and stress did not sit well together for Steve. The fact that he'd admitted he'd barely eaten in the last two days reinforced it. And then there'd been the puke in the kitchen sink. Danny cursed a little, pancakes and bacon probably wasn't a good choice in the circumstances.

They sat, quiet, not talking until Danny's ass was numb. Steve's body slowly relaxed, his head heavy on Danny's leg as Danny's foot lost sensation. The clouds kept building and Danny could see flickers of lightening across their faces, but there was no sound with it yet. The cloud above their peak was filling out, looking heavier and blacker. They'd lose the sun soon.

Steve finally heaved a sigh and uncurled, turning to look up at Danny. He gave a weak grin. "I think I'm all right."

"So you're fine with me here with you?"

"Me casa, su casa," Steve said flapping his hand to encompass the whole ledge on a mountainside. "It's going to rain soon. Did you bring a tent with all that gear?"

Danny grimaced, wriggling a little to relieve the pressure on his bottom. "I did, but it's only a little thing, barely more than a sleeping bag with waterproofing. Chin didn't want me carrying too much, so it was just an emergency measure really. In case I got stuck up here and didn't find you and had to spend the night alone. Not big enough for two, sorry." They really hadn't thought that through.

"So you had faith in me to provide you with decent shelter even though you came prepared and I came up on the spur of the moment?"

"Well yes." Danny slapped his shoulder. "Get up you ten ton tank. I've got a dead leg. I'm surprised you haven't built a six room mansion out of sticks already."

"Oh I have," Steve dead panned. "It's just over there." He pointed to the cliff. "Watch the step though. It's a fair way down to the front door." He sat up and moved fluidly and effortlessly to his feet as Danny floundered, wiggling his feet and wincing at the returning blood flow.

"Does this miniscule tent of yours have a fly?" Steve asked, already rooting through Danny's pack. "We can at least use that to make this shelter, well, a little more sheltered. Things got a bit wet in here yesterday afternoon."

"So why haven't you got a tent?"

Steve unrolled the tent fly and peered at his shelter, working out where to put it. His color was back to normal. He looked a bit sheepish. "I keep an emergency pack in the garage. Just in case I have to make a run for it at any time."

"Of course you do," Danny muttered but Steve ignored him.

"But it really is just emergency survival gear, nothing luxurious like a tent." Steve tied the corner of the fly to a tree and stretched it across to meet his tarpaulin, effectively creating a wall. He kept his back to Danny. "I was so… agitated. I didn't want to see you. But then you were in the house so I had to leave. I grabbed the kit and was about to pick up other stuff, tent, lantern, sleeping mat and things when Kono arrived." He shrugged. "I didn't want you following me so by the time I fixed that…"

"Yeah, Kono's really pissed about what you did to her car," Danny told him. He could see Steve flinch. "So you didn't have time to grab anything else." A large drop of water hit him square in the middle of the forehead.

"I'm sorry," Steve said.

"Yeah. Well. I know. You finished yet?" Four more drops hit him hard. "Only, you know…" He scrambled under the tarp. A peal of thunder suddenly rang out and echoed around the mountains. "It's about to rain."

Steve shook out the little tent and turned it upside down so the groundsheet part was on top and tied that at the other end of his shelter. Suddenly the shelter was three sided and Steve crowded in beside Danny just as the skies opened.

Their world reduced to their little piece of nearly water proof space. Outside all that could be seen were the closest shrubs and a wall of water. The noise level was phenomenal, the sound of trees thrashing, howls of wind around the face of the cliff and every now and then a crash of thunder. The tarps lifted and flapped, spraying water at them periodically but mostly keeping them dry. Forced close together by the small space they leaned on each other and stared out at the rain.

"You build a good shelter," Danny yelled when it became obvious that they weren't going to get wet. He had to cross his legs though to keep his feet undercover and he just wasn't built for that anymore.

"Did you tell Doris I was coming?" Steve asked. "The other day when she wasn't in the house?"

"Yeah. I did."

"Thank you," Steve breathed in his ear. The need to be close to hear each other, made for a very intimate conversation.

"Would you have hurt her?"

Steve's body shuddered. "I don't know."

"Doris says she's willing to talk, to tell you everything."

"Right," said Steve bitterly. "When I've finally worked out her big secret, now she'll talk." The wind was already dropping but the rain kept coming. Steve toed off his boots and lay down on his sleeping bag. "Lie down Danny. It's more comfortable than trying to sit up when you're not used to sitting on the ground."

Danny had to admit that his ass was once again numb and he felt stiff and awkward, not knowing which way to lean to keep comfortable. But… the only way to lie down and stay dry was to spoon with Steve. Steve was watching him and his eyes held something like hope along with deep set hurt and exhaustion. "Okay."

Steve surprised him by rolling over, presenting his back so that Danny spooned around him. As Danny put an arm over him and pulled himself in close so that his butt wasn't sticking out past the edge of the tarp, Steve sighed and molded in against him. Danny was surprised to find Steve's heart racing under his hand. He had to fight to suppress the surge of anger he felt towards Doris and Wo Fat and all the other people who had conspired to bring this strong, noble man so low. Steve must have noticed something though because he jerked forward. "Sorry. I didn't…."

He might have appeared off hand about wanting Danny to lie down with him but Steve very obviously wasn't. "Shhhh babe. It's all right." He pulled him back in, stroked his hand down Steve's chest and felt his body relax.

Danny didn't even bother asking him if he'd been getting any sleep. The answer was obvious. "I've got your back babe." He tightened his grip. "Get some rest. We'll work out what to do later."

Danny must have nodded off too because he came to, to discover the rain was long over and the sky above the mountain was tinged orange with the beginning of sunset. Steve was deeply and soundly asleep, his heart beat now slow and steady, his chest rising and falling with deep, even breaths. The temptation just to stay there, holding him, was strong but Danny's hip and shoulder ached from lying on the hard ground, and besides, it was going to be dark very soon. He eased himself carefully away from his partner but he needn't have worried. Steve never stirred.

Danny stretched and tried not to groan as he eased the kinks out of his limbs. He wished there was a comfortable bed in his future for tonight but by the same token he didn't regret for a moment, being here for Steve. The temperature was rapidly falling with the sun going down. Danny pulled his jersey out of his pack and shrugged into it. He grabbed his sleeping bag, opened it up and shook it out. Then he gently spread it over Steve. Steve snuffled slightly, pulled the edge of the bag up under his chin and settled again with a gentle sigh. Danny found his mouth curling up in a fond smile.

He grabbed two more things out of the pack, a battery lantern and his iPad. He didn't have any reception but he could still read his book.

It got dark quickly in the tropics, but up here in the jungle, as the light bled away, it got dark in way it never did in Honolulu. Danny found himself captivated by the huge vastness of a sky full of stars, his iPad forgotten on his lap. He leaned back against a tree, turned off the lantern and gazed at the stars. His body synced with the forest, the breezes whispering through it and the calls and rustling of its creatures as they went about their business at night. His nap earlier meant he wasn't tired, didn't need to sleep, not yet. Steve's presence, even though deeply asleep was enough to stave off any thoughts of being alone and the relief of having found him removed a great deal of the tension he'd been carrying the last few days. For the first time in his life, Danny Williams started to understand the appeal of camping.

But a city slicker can only appreciate the wilderness for so long, and after twenty minutes or so, Danny woke up the tablet, turned on the lantern, and settled in with the latest Dan Brown. The plot was absolutely ridiculous, but he liked finding holes in it, working out the twists before the author told him. He placed the lantern a few feet away from him because it and the light of his screen attracted moths. He hoped that if the lantern was a little way away, the insects gathering around his screen would be lured over there to the brighter light. It was a marginally successful plan. Some of those bugs were big.

A city slicker can also only spend so long leaning against a tree before he started to feel uncomfortable and wished he had a lawn chair. He also started to feel hungry. He was contemplating the virtues of eating a couple of granola bars, versus starting up the cooker and doing something with eggs and the remaining bacon when he became aware he was being watched.

Steve was awake. He'd rolled over and was pillowing his head on his arm watching Danny read. He still had the sleeping bag pulled up over his shoulders and seemed content just to lie there. "Hey," Danny whispered, unwilling to disturb the peace, "How you doing?"

Steve seemed to give it some thought. "Good, I think. I wasn't sure if I'd dreamed it. You being here." He turned on his back and stretched. "How long have I been asleep?"

"A good four hours. Do you feel like some food? I was thinking of cooking up those eggs."

"You can't cook eggs." Steve leapt up, throwing off the sleeping bag. "I'll do it." It was the most animated he'd appeared since Danny arrived.

So this time Danny watched and Steve did the cooking. They sat side by side under the stars and ate scrambled eggs out of the pan. Steve only ate a few forkfuls before sighing and pushing it towards Danny. "You finish it. I've had enough."

"Steve."

"I'm okay. Really." He leaned closer to Danny, his body touching all down the side, warm and solid and sad. "Thank you," Steve said. "Thank you for coming up here, for everything."

Danny pushed the pan away. "Of course I came babe." He patted his thigh. "I said this before. You'd do the same for me."

Steve pulled away a bit and sat staring out into the darkness. The line of his body was tense. When he finally spoke again it was quietly, into the night. "I trust you." Before Danny could say anything however he continued. "I'm used to trusting people. I never knew not to. In the Navy, the trust you have in your team, in your superiors, it's just implicit. It just is. They're giving you orders and you give orders to others, because what we do, it's right. You know that these guys, they're on your side; they've got your back. You trust them with your life and you know that they can't guarantee that, but they'll do their very very best to make sure you come out of it alive. And you give that back.

"I trusted my parents." He sat silent and Danny knew enough not to interrupt, to allow him to marshal his thoughts. "Of course I trusted my parents. What kid doesn't?" There were frogs chirruping somewhere close by. "And now everything I thought I knew is wrong, just wrong."

Danny thought of all the people that Steve trusted who had betrayed him in the last few years: Jamison, Jenna Kaye, Joe White, Nick Taylor. Doris was bigger, far bigger than them all.

"Do you think she's Yakusa?" Steve could barely force the words out, his voice breathless, reedy. "Has she told you anything?"

"She wants to talk to you first."

Steve huffed out a breath and rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes. He turned to Danny, emotions hidden in the dark. "Tell me you've got her on the no-fly list. I don't want her to skip the country before I get back."

Danny jerked. "Do you think she might?"

"Yeah," pain and exhaustion showed in every line of Steve's body, silhouetted against the stars. "I really think she might."

Danny turned back to his pack to find the sat phone. "I'll call Chin."

H50H50H50

Steve disappeared into the bushes with his knife and a flashlight and came back with a lot of fern leaves and other springy vegetation to build a mattress. He laid it out carefully inside the shelter, then covered it with his own sleeping bag which they then covered with Danny's. "There," he said with satisfaction. "That should make you more comfortable."

Danny wasn't so sure, but he was starting to feel tired enough to try sleeping again. "Come on," Steve said, toeing off his boots. He pulled his tee shirt over his head, shoved down his pants and then proceeded to fold the pants and stuff them inside the shirt to make a pillow. He slid in between the sleeping bags. "It will be cozy."

"Cozy, he says," Danny told the stars or the frogs or whatever was listening, but he sat down on the edge of the makeshift bed and yanked his boots off too. He followed Steve's example of turning his clothing into a pillow, adding his polar fleece jersey to the pile as well. Only, when he slid between the sleeping bags, it wasn't cozy at all. "Christ you're freezing." Steve turned and wrapped around him like a frozen octopus. "Why the hell didn't you put more clothes on when you got up before?"

"Haven't got any more," Steve mumbled into is chest. "Only got what I was wearing when I ran."

"Goof." Danny pulled the sleeping bag around them and hugged him tight.

"See, now I know you're really worried about me. You haven't shouted at me once."

Danny chose his words carefully. "Yes, I am worried about you. But it's alright. In the morning, when you've had some more sleep and I've got a bit more food inside you, I'll start yelling again. Is that all right? I've got quite a bit saved up that I want to yell about." He gave him a quick poke in the ribs, making Steve jump, then went back to stroking his hand up and down his back. "I'm just amused to discover that your emergency escape kit isn't perfect. No spare clothes."

"Well it is supposed to be just for emergencies and it did its job okay." Steve snorted. "I will concede that there might be one or two items missing that would have been useful."

"Oh yes?"

"Well, a toothbrush for one." Steve smacked him lips, his breath warm against Danny's chest.

Danny tried to stifle the rising arousal that Steve's proximity was causing. "I thought you didn't use toothpaste or deodorant or anything like that in the jungle so your smell doesn't give you away to the enemy."

"How do you know that?"

Danny huffed. "I read."

"Yeah, well, I'm not on the run from the Viet Cong so toothpaste and a brush would be kind of nice."

"So what else?"

"Huh?"

"You said there were a few items missing. What else?"

Steve sniggered. "Toilet paper. Leaves are all very well, but…"

Danny rolled onto his back, shifting to try and get away from a stick that was poking him in the ribs. Steve followed him, lying across his chest. "Enough detail right there Steven. Do not elaborate. I do not want to know which leaves make the best butt wipes." Steve started to say something. "Ahh. No. I do not want to know. No."

"Danny."

"No."

"You might be out in the wilderness without TP."

"I won't. Not ever."

"But Danny."

"No."

They settled. Danny had to concede that their nest was actually quite comfortable. "Why did you run Steve?" Danny kept his arm around him, a little scared that he might get up and run, even now. "When you figured out Doris wasn't in the house, why did you run away?"

The frogs were making a hell of a racket. Whoever said that there was peace and quiet in the countryside was lying.

"I was so wound up I was going to explode," Steve said. "If she'd been there… I'd been quite prepared to do whatever it took to get the truth out of her." He tensed, his fingers on Danny's stomach clenching into a claw. "Anything. Including shooting her in the kneecaps to get her to talk." His breathing was ragged against Danny's chest. "Then she wasn't there and I knew you had to be behind me. I couldn't bear it. You'd try and calm me, contain me… talk to me. And… I just wanted… I needed…" Steve was panting. "I had to run, physically run and run." He huffed out a breath. "And I couldn't do that if I stayed there. You wouldn't have let me… I didn't want to see you, talk to you. I didn't want to TALK. Christ. I couldn't."

He was shaking, muscles taut and Danny held on tight, shushing, stroking, "Shhhhh. Shhhhh," automatically kissing his hair, rubbing his back.

"Danny?" Steve seemed to consciously relax his body, becoming limp and heavy in Danny's arms. Then he raised his head and reached up for a kiss.

It was automatic, to accept the kiss, give in to it, enjoy it. It had been months, but kissing Steve was so familiar, so beautiful that it took several long moments for reality to assert itself, and even then the temptation just to keep on doing what they were doing was immense. Sadly Danny pulled back. Steve moaned.

"Stop. Steve. No."

"Danny?" Steve sounded so sad.

"No Steve," and damn it, his body was stridently saying yes.

"Please," Steve whispered on an exhale. "Danny please."

"No." Reluctantly Danny slid out from under him. "Come on Steve. We talked about this. We had good reasons for stopping this, for not doing this anymore." He was annoyed at being put in this position. It would be so easy to give in. He didn't understand why he had to be the strong one. "You were there. You remember."

"It didn't work out with you and Gaby."

That was a low blow. "No. I can honestly say I gave it a good attempt, but you're right. It didn't work out. But it didn't work out with you and me either. Did it? And besides, now you've got Catherine."

"Cath's not my girlfriend."

"See, you keep saying that. But that's not what it looks like from where I'm sitting. I like Cath. I wouldn't do that to her." He slapped Steve's hand that was creeping back across his stomach. "Don't you dare say, no one would know."

"I'd tell her," Steve said. "She'd like it. She's talked about it. You and me doing it."

"What?" Danny sat up. "What the fuck are you talking about?" His head hit the tarpaulin roof and the whole structure rustled and shook. "Are you talking about Cath wanting to watch?" He fumbled his way out of the shelter, the cool night air welcome on his suddenly overheated body. "No. Don't tell me. Just don't."

He sat out on the grassy ledge trying to get some grip on the crazy that was whirling through his head. Steve was eerily silent behind him. Danny was starting to feel chilled, and maybe a little stupid before Steve spoke again. "Danny," he called quietly. "Come back to bed. I promise not to molest you. Okay?"

"No. Not okay, you fucked-up shit head."

"Now you're shouting."

"Yeah. Now I'm shouting."

"Don't you want me Danny?"

"Fuck. Steve." Danny crawled back to the shelter. "Always, I always want you but it's not about sex. Love and affection are not about sex. You don't have to pay me for coming here, for caring for you, with sex. You do know that, don't you?" Danny suddenly had the startling realization that Steve didn't know that. With it came the light bulb glimpse of his relationship with Catherine. Catherine helped Steve. Steve slept with Catherine. "Oh fuck." He fumbled in the dark until he found Steve's shoulders, pushed him back onto the bedding. "Steven J McGarrett, I don't know where to start with your issues. Jesus. Fuck…" he flung up his hands. "Steve…" What the hell had happened to him in the Navy? When had he started thinking he needed to pay for favors with his body?

Danny swallowed hard, trying to get some sort of grip. Steve needed so much help. He had so many layers of festering wounds that Danny couldn't even begin to work out what to treat first. "Okay." He was cold. "We need to sleep. Damn and fuck Steve, there were reasons we split up. Good reasons and those still stand. We came out of it and stayed friends and that means more to me than anything. I just don't think I could break up with you again. And right now… I just want to forget this conversation ever happened. Okay?"

"Okay." Steve sounded really small. "Can we hug?" and there were definitely tears in his voice. "I won't… I'll be good."

"Jesus." Danny's own voice caught. "Yes we can hug." He slid into the covers, felt Steve roll over and spooned around him, the way they'd been earlier. Danny was shivering a little, Steve now the warm one. He took great pleasure at plastering his body all down Steve's back, enjoying the heat and the way Steve squeaked a little when he did it. He made a mental note to pull back before his cock decided it was all too much fun, but in spite of all the disturbing images in his head he fell asleep before that became a problem.


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three

"The Holiday Inn?" Steve said in disbelief.

"Neutral territory," Danny replied as he pulled into the parking lot. He very adamantly had not let Steve drive, was treating him like a damaged child, in Steve's opinion. Steve was sick of it.

"Tell me she's not living here?"

"Not as far as I'm aware," Danny said. "I don't actually know where she's staying, but I do know Chin and Catherine have stuck with her. Like glue. No one is taking the chance that she'll run before she can talk to you."

Steve hated, hated so much, that he and his team were treating his mother like a criminal, but as far as they knew, she very well might be one. He suddenly had more of an insight into Danny's melt down when his brother turned out to be on the wrong side of the law. It hurt.

God, he wanted this over. Wanted to know exactly what he was dealing with. Wanted to be able to deal with something tangible, not the half-truths and outright lies he'd been hearing all his life. "Where is she?" he asked, getting out of the car.

"Room 1501. Chin says they're about five minutes away." Danny steered him into the lobby and towards the elevators. He was peering around as if he expected them to come under attack at any moment. "Come on, let's go up. I don't want this meeting to happen here."

"You scared I'm going to make a scene Danno?"

"Oh I know you're going to make a scene Babe. I just want to manage the situation a little. Make sure no one's carrying any guns for instance."

"Danny. For fuck sake."

The elevator door pinged open and Danny planted a hand against his back and shoved him through it. Steve suddenly realised that Danny was every bit as nervous about the upcoming meeting with Doris as he was. He sagged, turned forward to face the doors. "It will be all right Danny. Whatever happens, whatever she says, it doesn't change us. It doesn't change Five Oh." He pressed his face into his hands, took a moment to pull his mission face on. "I won't let anything change." When he looked up Danny was watching him intently. They shared a small smile. Then the door opened on the fifteenth floor and Danny led the way down the corridor.

Room 1501 was a standard hotel room. It was also obviously empty, with no-one staying in it. Steve went to drop onto the sofa but changed his mind and sat at the table instead. He was still tired, in spite of the surprisingly good sleep he'd had wrapped around Danny in the jungle the night before. It was as much mental exhaustion as physical, he knew that. That was why he'd pushed for having this meeting this afternoon. He needed it over. It was like waiting on the results of a biopsy. The brain conjured the absolute worst case scenarios with no ability to fix any of them. Even a known negative outcome was better than that.

"Steve? Coffee?" Danny was holding the coffee pot.

Steve shook his head. The sandwich he'd had for lunch was sitting solid and uncomfortable in his belly. A click of the lock heralded the opening of the door and he was standing and reaching for the gun he wasn't carrying before he could think.

Chin came through the door, closely followed by Doris, Kono and Cath. Doris saw his aborted move and smirked. "Stand down Steven," and he froze, overwhelmed by the contrasting impulses to flee in embarrassment or slap her smug face.

He felt Danny's hand on his shoulder, letting him breathe again as he urged him back into the chair. "Doris," Danny said coldly. "Thank you for coming."

She surveyed Danny, hands on hips, as if she'd found him at some dive of a bar. She looked completely cool and normal. "You didn't think I'd come?" she asked.

"The possibility crossed our minds," Steve growled.

"You said you had trust issues." Doris sat herself in the chair opposite Steve and perused him. "If you're making tea, I'll have some," she told Danny without taking her eyes off Steve. He kept his closed fists hidden below the table and forced himself not to clench his jaw. "White, no sugar. Steve, you look terrible." She sagged back in the chair a little, "I am truly sorry, for what you must have been through in the last couple of days."

Steve gaped at her. She was a stranger with a familiar face. "The last few days? What about my entire fucking life?" Because he was over treating her with the respect he should be able to give his mother.

Chin and Danny both stepped forward. "Why don't we all sit down with a cup of tea," Chin said, "and then we can talk about it?"

The tension eased a little. Doris looked around the room at everybody. "I assume you're all staying here. You won't let me talk to Steve alone?"

"No fucking way," Danny and Cath both said at once. It would be funny at any other time.

"What they said," Kono added.

Chin folded his arms and leant against the wall, a solid and obviously immovable object.

"Ohana," Steve murmured, feeling a warmth easing the tension in his muscles.

"Ohana," they chorused.

Doris raised her eyebrows. "Impressive. You practise that?"

"Can I slap her?" Danny asked Chin.

"Make the tea," Chin said mildly.

"Well, I hate to break it to you," Danny's hand encompassed them all, "but this room is a double and there are only two cups. And not many more teabags."

Doris was about to speak but Steve had had enough. "Forget the tea." He thumped the table. "Talk Doris. If that is even your real name."

Doris reared back in her chair. "What the hell do you mean by that Steven?" Her face was very close to the 'I'm sending you to your room' face that he remembered so well. The feeling of disconnect was wrenching him apart.

Steve pinched the inside of his thigh, creating a focus in the here and now. It's a mission. Treat it like a mission – difficult, awkward and unpleasant, but necessary. "So many lies,' he enunciated carefully. "How do I know? Who are you?"

Doris looked affronted. 'You ask me that? You knew your grandparents. Do you think I made them up too? Your Nanny Pat who made you lamingtons, from scratch, because you said you liked them. You remember your Nanny, Steve? And your Poppa Paul? He sat on that jetty near their house for so many hours with you, teaching you to fish. You remember him?"

"I remember," Steve said and resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. "Did they know…?"

"Did they know about what I did, or did they know about the baby?" Doris' arms were crossed, daring him to openly say it. He didn't want to, he didn't want to, he didn't want to know.

"Steve," Chin said quietly, still leaning against the wall. "Why don't you let Doris tell her story? Then you can ask questions if you need to."

"Okay." His lunch was threatening to reappear. "Danny. Can I have one of your cups of tea?"

"Sure Babe. Sugar?"

"No. Thanks." He fixed his eyes on his mother. "How do I know that you're going to tell me the truth? You've been a little economical with it so far."

"What? You want me to swear on a stack of bibles? There'll be one in that bedside cabinet over there. Chin, you want to throw it over?"

"No." Steve was a little more in control now. "I want you to swear on something that's meaningful to you?"

Her wry smile said she was disappointed in him. "I'll swear on the life of my children," she said.

"I see." Steve nodded. "All of them?"

"Yes," she said, very clearly. "All of them. I swear that what I'm going to tell you is the truth and I swear it on the life of all of my children. And I love them all."

"Fuck," Danny muttered as he fiddled with the cups. "Rub it in."

Doris glared at him, then turned her gaze back to Steve. She reached across the table to take his hand, but he wrenched back and away from her. "I love you," she told him and she had that slightly teary look she got when he disappointed her. "You can have no idea, the sort of feelings a mother has for her child."

"Doris," Chin interjected before Steve could say something dreadful. "Why don't you start at the beginning? Tell your story."

"Thank you," Doris inclined her head towards Chin. She sat back in the chair again and looked around, a born story teller taking in her audience. Chin was leaning against the wall, Cath and Kono, Steve knew, were sitting on the bed behind him. A cup of tea appeared on the table by Steve's elbow and Danny's hand rested on his shoulder momentarily before Danny slid back to lean against the tiny bench top, arms folded, mirroring Chin. Doris turned her gaze back to Steve. "I was Doris Bethwaite," she started. "I grew up over on the North Shore, but you knew that. And I was clever girl."

Steve took a grateful sip of his tea as Doris launched into her story. It was obviously well rehearsed. She'd probably spent years thinking about how to explain herself to her family. The tea settled his stomach and gave him something to do with his hands.

The trouble with being a clever girl in the early seventies was that girls' career choices, at least in small backwater places like Honolulu, were limited to teaching, nursing, being an airline stewardess, "So glamorous," Doris cooed, or office work. So she trained as a teacher. "Because at least the College of Education was on the University campus."

That worked really well for her. Her parents thought she was going off training to be a teacher while she was spending most of her time sitting in on a wide range of science lectures. "Physics, chemistry, applied math…" Doris said dreamily. "The teaching classes were so dumbed down… it was so easy to pass. I had plenty of time for the other. People were a bit surprised of course, but no one really cared. I was young too, a year ahead of most, so that got a bit of comment." But then, with the end of the semester approaching she managed to sweet talk her father into paying the course fees so she could sit the extra exams. "He agreed not to tell my mother." Doris smiled, "Probably more because he was scared she'd tell him off for spending the money on a science degree for a girl who was never going to use it." She sagged a little. "My mother never understood. She was happy to be a mother; that was her entire being. I was never going to be like her. I wanted so much more." Steve bit hard on the inside of his lip to keep from interrupting, the area raw from the worrying he'd been giving it the last few days.

Doris kept up both courses. She had enough time to join clubs. "It was the Vietnam era, the peace movement, loads of potential political conflict in Palestine, Iran, Cambodia, China. I wasn't a protester but I was interested." She emphasised the word, "I was so **interested** in what was happening in the world, what American politics were doing to the world." Doris sipped her own tea that Steve hadn't even noticed Danny had made and smiled, happy and pleased with her memories. "I talked international politics to everyone. I wanted to change my degree; away from the physical sciences to political science, but Dad wouldn't let me. I only had one more semester to graduate. And that's when I was approached by the CIA."

It was all fun at first. "Steve," she held eye contact. "I had no idea what it would do to my life. It was exciting. It was everything I wanted."

To start with Doris and a few others from her circle of cronies were vetted by men in suits who played elaborate role play games with them. "The, 'imagine you're in a foreign country and you've only got $10 left in your pocket,' sort of scenario. Only we'd all be given a role to play. It was all on paper, sitting around a table, scripting a story with no consequences whatsoever. It wasn't so different to what we did in the clubs." Then it got more serious and Doris was singled out. "They asked me what I was prepared to do for my country," she gave a snort. "What did they expect me to say?" Again she tried to catch Steve's eye. "I said, 'Anything.' Of course."

And god damn it. Steve knew that. Steve had been there. Steve had done that. She knew that. Knew exactly how she was coming across. Knew he was seeing the parallels. Knew he couldn't hate her. Not for wanting that.

It had taken six months to put into effect and she'd managed to complete her teacher training at the same time, but not the science degree. She'd been far too busy learning unarmed combat and spy craft to have time for that. The teaching diploma though, they needed her to have that, so have that she must. But at the same time she was given 'training'. "I learnt how to set wire taps and surveillance." Doris grinned, staring straight at Steve as she said it. "Then there was weapons skills and hand to hand combat. You're not the only person in this family who can kill with their bare hands Steve." She folded her arms and looked nonchalant and Steve realised that for the first time in his life, he was seeing his mother as she really was and it was diametrically opposed to the image of her that he carried in his head from his childhood. She was a highly trained CIA operative, she was good at what she did, and what's more, she liked it. She was dangerous.

"I became Iris Bellworthy and I was sent into China, to teach at an 'American English Language School' in Shanghai." She made dit dit marks in the air. Shanghai was a hotbed of political intrigue, international gangs and human trafficking. It was also a way station for Asian criminals working their way into the United States. They needed to learn English, were prepared to pay money to be taught by native speakers and were very impressed by bonafide teaching credentials. "I was blond," Doris leaned back in her chair, lost in memory. "So exotic to the dark haired Chinese. I was very popular. Quite a few of my pupils wanted to see me out of class, practise their English."

Steve's stomach roiled. His face must have looked like thunder.

Doris laughed. "Chill out Steve. I was young. It was fun." Her face turned serious, "And besides, it was my job. That was what I was there for. I needed to find out as much as I could about their plans. Work out who was a criminal, who was genuine, what their intentions were if they got their visas."

Steve forced himself to finish his tea.

Doris's lips made a straight line. He was pleased to see that she was uncomfortable about the next bit of the story. "I'd been there about two years when I met Wo Ji. He was my age, clever, intelligent. Charming even. I was getting no-where with discovering his plans, other than he wanted to start a business in America. My bosses were very interested in him. They were pretty sure he was the son of one of the leaders of a Triad Gang out of Liaoning in the north of China, near the Korean border. The gang were starting to make waves in the drug trade all through the East China Sea and they were suspected of pirate attacks against shipping all the way down to Malaysia." She gave a wry grin. "So I had to get closer." She spread her hands. "Pregnancy was never supposed to be in the equation though."

"Hang on a moment." Steve did a quick calculation. "You finished school a year early right?"

"That's right."

"So assuming you took the usual three years to get your degree… you were… what?" The thought was appalling. "Twenty three years old?" He heard the sharp intake of breath from the others in the room but his concentration was all on Doris. On his mother.

She gave him a smile tinged with sadness. "Twenty two actually Steven."

"Shit." And maybe he saw her a little different now, had to concede that her life hadn't all been a bed of roses. He could see it on her face, just for a moment, before the inscrutable façade rose again. It had been bad. She hadn't been the tough CIA agent back then. That woman came later. "So what happened?" he asked quietly.

"My handlers were delighted. Here was a way for me to get closer to a major player." She gave a wry smile that softened into something nearly fond. "Ji wasn't very pleased about the baby, but he wasn't too upset either. Took it as a sign of his virility. He always was an arrogant ass. His father… well. When his father got wind of it all hell broke loose. He," she smiled, "now he was a gentleman."

Wo Ji's father organised for Doris to move into the family's compound, and to leave the American school. Marriage was completely out of the question, but the child would be cherished regardless. Doris earned her keep by teaching English to those in the compound, staff, and other employees of Wo senior's boss. And she also managed, in the guise of helping her lover out, to 'help' with the book-keeping for his own personal business and to get a more than a glance at the books for the whole organisation.

Doris smiled depreciatingly. "I was good with figures but I'm not sure how much they trusted me. I don't think they suspected I was spying but I was a Westerner so they wouldn't let me close."

Doris gave a shrug then, hand-waving the trauma of giving birth alone, in a foreign country. "I was honoured as Benny's mother, of course, but we were already disagreeing over his future and it was obvious that I had no say. At all."

"Benny?" Kono burst out. "Wo Fat's name is Benny?"

"No," Doris jerked out of her reverie. "That was one of the things we disagreed on. I named him Benny and that's what I called him, but Fat was his Chinese name and he won't have heard Benny for a very long time."

"Why did you leave?" Steve asked quietly.

"I had no choice."

"You left your child behind?" Danny accused.

"You think I wanted to?" Doris turned on him. She breathed out hard through her nose. "It was the hardest thing I had ever done." For a very long moment the sound of traffic, fifteen floors below on the street was the loudest thing in the room. "I had to go. Wo senior was rising up the ranks of the gang, but Ji was leaving to join the Chinese military. All the family did time in the military. He couldn't take me with him of course and without him in the compound, suddenly I was nobody." She shuddered and turned away slightly, but Steve could see the tears in her eyes. "Then they took Benny away from me. One morning I went to get him up and he wasn't in his room. All his things were packed away." She hung her head but Steve could see her biting her lip. She swallowed and looked up. "It took me three days to find out that he had been sent out into the country, to his grandmother's," she spat out the words, "to grow up properly Chinese."

"Mom?" Steve reached out tentatively and took her hand. She gripped it briefly then let him go.

"I went back to my handlers. They pulled me out of the compound, but I doubt anyone there noticed me gone or cared. But they wouldn't help find my baby." She took a shuddery breath. "What can I say? Covert Ops is all staffed by men. They had no idea, no sympathy. I'd done my job and my usefulness there was over. End of story."

"What about the embassy?" Kono asked.

"The embassy?"

"You were CIA," Steve said, getting it, even as a rock lodged in his stomach. "You'd willingly entered into a contract…"

"Yeah." Doris looked at him fondly. "There was nothing anyone was willing to do. Especially not if it would break my cover with the gang and let them know that I'd been a plant and that the US was on to them and their American plans."

Steve felt unexpected tears pricking at his own eyelids. Never on any of his missions had he experienced anything as heart breaking as that must have been. "When did you kill his father? When did you kill Wo Ji?"

"Not then," Doris whispered. "That was years later. Back then I came home."

Doris took a moment to finish drinking her tea and Steve stole a moment to look around the room and check on his team. Everyone, to varying degrees looked a little shell shocked. Doris was wearing that calm, inscrutable face that must have served her so well. He found he didn't feel as sorry for her as her story warranted. She'd still screwed him and his family over mightily. There were still a lot of questions to answer. "So how did you meet Dad?" he asked, getting the questioning back on track.

Doris smiled; her face open and genuine. "We met at tennis." She and Jack had actually been at school together but she hadn't paid much attention to him at the time. On coming back to Hawaii she moved back in with her parents, got a job teaching science at the high school she felt she'd left lifetimes before and started trying to be the person she might have been if the CIA hadn't found her. She took tennis lessons and that's where she met Jack McGarrett. "He was a rookie cop and he was…" Doris sighed, "he was just what I needed.

"I wasn't allowed to tell anyone about what I'd been doing in China, beyond my cover story of teaching English at the American School." Her lip twisted and she nodded at Steve. "It was classified." Steve found himself smiling back before catching Danny's eye and realising that Doris was playing him. Again. Appealing to their joint history in working covertly even though what they'd actually done had been nothing alike.

"I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about my baby either. My parents just thought all my moping was because I'd had my heart broken by some boy. But I had to tell someone and somehow I told Jack." She looked up. "I didn't tell him about the mission, just that I'd had a child and had to leave him behind with his grandparents." She looked down at her clasped hands. "And that I missed him."

Jack had understood, or been willing to hold her while she cried anyway. "And the next thing, one thing led to another and," she gave Steve a sideways look, "I was pregnant again."

Someone behind Steve gasped.

"What?" Doris said. "Steve, you do know were born only five months after we were married, don't you? I know some people have premature babies but that would have been ridiculous."

"You know Mom, I don't think I've ever heard that put so coldly before."

"I'm sorry," she gave a soft smile. "I'm not ashamed of it and we're going for the complete truth here, for honesty. Isn't that what you want?"

Steve nodded.

"You were wanted though. Very much."

Something untangled, just a little, in his gut.

"So we set up house." Doris relaxed a bit. "We were happy. Jack was starting in with the HPD and he was good at the job. We bought the beach house. I'd been very well paid for my efforts in China so we could afford somewhere nice. Back then it was a neighbourhood of young families, not the way it is now with most of the old houses gone and expensive condos put up. We couldn't have afforded it on Jack's pay but he didn't mind.

"I had my baby." Doris smiled at Steve and reached for his hand again. "A beautiful baby I could keep. Mary came along. We were living the dream." She sighed.

"You hated it, didn't you?" Cath said. "I know I would. After everything I've done, I could never settle down and play suburban mother. I bet you couldn't either."

Doris gave a small bow in her direction. "She's a smart girl Steve, but I don't think you should marry her. She's just said why, right there."

Cath gave him a rueful look and a shrug.

"It's all right Mom," Steve told her. "I already worked that out."

Doris stared at him. "You already asked her didn't you? And she turned you down." She slapped the table top. "I knew it."

Steve felt the blush roaring up his neck to his ears. "What Catherine and I do is nothing to do with you." He glared. "Can we get this conversation back to you? Mom."

She gave him that look that said she saw straight through him. "Fine. What do you want to know?"

"Your little getaway trips to Maui with your girlfriends. What were they really?"

Doris looked like she'd sucked a lemon. "Some of them were exactly as advertised. For cover. They were excruciating. Those women with their dull and insular lives, cake bake sales and fundraising for Save the Whales if they wanted to look cosmopolitan. I don't know how they survived with nothing but mush in their heads."

"And the rest?"

"Yes, the rest of those trips, as you guessed, were training; up skilling, with the CIA. I always knew I'd go back to it one day." She unconsciously rubbed her shoulder. "Nothing like spending three days on the rifle range with the latest weaponry for getting your blood stirred up. I used to come home and know I could cope with domesticity, for a while longer."

They were getting to the big question and everyone knew it. Steve wasn't sure he could bring himself to do it, so he asked another question instead. "Did you love us?"

"Yes. Absolutely." Doris held his hand, squeezed tight. "Never doubt that Steve. I loved you, you and Mary so very much. You two are the best things I have ever done with my life."

But he couldn't believe her and around the thickening in his throat he found he finally could ask. "So why did you do it? Why fake your own death? Why did you leave?"

The look on her face was something he couldn't describe, anguished yet proud and defiant. "I had to," she said. "Uh. No," she held up her hands. "My story. Let me talk." She sat back and folded her arms. "I had to.

"The Yakuza were making inroads in Hawaii, California and American Samoa. I know; nothing really to do with me. Except… Wo Ji was thought to be the leader of the organisation. How he'd gone from the Chinese military and Triad Gangs to a Japanese gang no-one was quite sure. It turns out a gang's a gang and money talks, but no one knew that then. He was going backwards and forwards from China all the time, sometimes under his own name, sometimes not. The Yakuza had stepped up from just drugs and piracy to protection rackets, people trafficking, and prostitution. Chinese girls sold by their parents to circumvent the one child policy and shipped to the States as prostitutes. It was nasty stuff.

"Wo Ji wasn't universally liked by his lieutenants. There was a lot of in-fighting and murders. The CIA had made some inroads with his son, Wo Fat," she faltered for a moment, "Benny." Doris collected herself. "They had people in the military academy he was studying at. They thought there was a chance that he could be turned, could, at the least, spy on his father or possibly even take over from him and pull the Yakuza back out of the States." She snorted. "Stupid I know, but it seemed feasible at the time. The CIA desperately needed someone on the inside to see what was really going on." She shrugged. "So they asked me."

"And you jumped at it," Catherine said dully.

"Oh yes. I was so bored. I couldn't stand the life I was living. It felt so fake; like suburban house mom was the undercover life."

"Mom?" Steve couldn't help the whimper that came from his aching chest.

Doris gave him that fond smile. "You were nearly grown. You didn't need me. You thought you did, but all I was doing was putting a meal on the table and doing your laundry. I was invisible to you busy people living your lives. Your father hardly ever came home until late. Mary was racing around chasing boys and learning to surf and ignoring anything I had to say. And you," she smiled indulgently and Steve thought his heart was going to stop, 'you my All American, quarter back hero. You were an arrogant little shit that pulled hissy fits because I didn't change my cooking methods to meet your standards for football training. Or I had left stains on your favourite tee shirt by not washing it right, like it was my fault the stain got there in the first place. You were horrible to live with."

Doris snapped her fingers in front of his face. "For fuck sake, breathe Steve. Pull your head out of your idealised memories of family life and try to remember what it was really like."

"You bitch," Danny breathed, somewhere near Steve's ear.

"And you don't get to judge me," Doris' eyes were burning daggers as she waved a finger at Danny. "Just imagine Detective, what your home would have been like in ten years' time if you'd stayed with your wife? Strangers living in the same house, with nothing in common. It's not nice."

Danny's hand was gripping Steve's shoulder, hard enough to hurt and he welcomed the pain. He wondered what would happen if he attacked her. Would she meet him half way or would she kick his ass? He struggled to maintain some form of calm. To breathe, like she told him. His vision was fuzzy with tears. This was so much worse than he'd feared.

"You know Steve," Danny said, his voice tight. "I always thought your inept social skills were due to the traumas you suffered as a teenager. You know, lack of role modelling at a crucial time in your life." The grip on his shoulder loosened and turned to a stroke. "Now I think, sadly, that there may be a genetic component to it. Clearly, it is not your fault."

Steve choked out a laugh and heard several of the others do the same. "You think my social skills are inept?"

"Oh, they're inept all right."

"I'll second that," Catherine piped up.

Doris just glared. Steve's friends gave him the strength to go on. "Staging your death Mom. Why did you do that?"

"Okay," Doris had the arms folded again. "First off, that was NOT meant to be permanent. I was supposed to be able to come back from the mission and pick up my life again. I thought your father would be told; I was assured he would be told." She looked sad. "And secondly, it was NOT my idea. I was already deep into preparing for the mission when I was told it had to be done. By then I was in too deep. I had to go ahead with it."

"Why?" Steve asked. "What was the point of it? How could doing that, help the mission?" Danny's hand hadn't left his shoulder and he reached out and placed his hand on top of Danny's. Danny squeezed him back.

"The point was making sure I could not be identified as Doris McGarrett. It was to protect you."

"But…"

"Let me finish." Doris gave him the stern look and Steve closed his eyes, gathering strength.

"Go on." He kept his eyes closed but could feel the withering look she was probably giving him. He jumped when he felt a touch on his other hand.

"Steve, look at me."

Reluctantly he opened his eyes. Hers were full of sympathy. "Believe me Steve, I did it to protect you."

"And that worked out so well," Danny said.

Doris ignored him. "Iris Bethwaite had spent the past seventeen years roaming around the country, but had lately settled in Wyoming. She was teaching, had gained an accounting degree and had never married. The detail that went into the background was immaculate. There was no way Wo Ji could find out it wasn't real. Except for one thing. The Yakuza were now in Hawaii, he had been to Hawaii. It was possible that someone in his organisation could recognise me, purely from the two of us having been in the same place at the same time. But if Doris McGarrett were dead, well then, I might bear a striking resemblance to her, but I couldn't possibly be her. Could I?"

"Fuck," Steve breathed.

"That was roughly my response when I heard too," Doris admitted. "But, they did assure me, that Jack would be told the truth. It never occurred to me that he wouldn't know." She looked pained, but Steve reminded himself, she was an accomplished liar. "That's where it all went so wrong. Jack realised pretty quickly that it was no accident, although he still assumed me dead. But then he concluded the accident had to be in response to something he was working on, which indirectly was the Yakuza. It was such a mess. And I'd never have imagined that he would send you away. Steve you have to believe me. None of that was meant to happen."

Steve was beyond words. He just stared at her. The whole story was surreal.

"Tell us about Shelburne?" Danny said gruffly. "Shelburne is supposed to have killed Wo Fat's father." The hand on Steve's shoulder tightened its grip. "If that's you, you killed the father of your child."

Doris' façade cracked, just a little. She was starting to look tired. Her voice didn't give anything away though. "Is that a question Danny?" She looked up at him, her posture defiant. "Yes. I was Shelburne and yes I killed Wo Ji." She took a tight breath and clenched her front teeth together. "It goes without saying that everything said in this room today is highly confidential." She was buying time; Steve knew that tactic. Giving herself a moment to collect herself, prepare her story.

No one said a word.

"Okay." Doris leant forward again, made eye contact with Steve again. He glared at her, terrified that she was going to shatter what remained of his world.

"Okay. I approached Wo Ji. I came at him as a mother who had spent seventeen years searching for her son. I asked to see Benny… Wo Fat and… I was surprised when Wo Ji agreed that I could, but I wasn't to let him know who I was. Wo Ji wasn't pleased to have his son's white, American mother back in his life. He was worried what that might do to his son's standing within the communist party and the military. You think being a haole in Hawaii is bad, it's nothing on being one in China…"

Doris raised her gaze to the roof. "He was beautiful." When she looked down again she was back under control. "Wo Fat was eighteen; he'd graduated from the military academy and was talking of a career in intelligence. However Benny, knew something was up, that I wasn't just the woman that had worked for his father when he was small," her lip trembled, just a little as she corrected herself, "Benny…Wo Fat was curious. He suspected the truth and he wanted to get to know me."

Doris stayed close and started getting to know her son, meeting him for the odd hour or so, sometimes half a day. They had a meal or went for a walk and they talked. And they tried to keep their meetings from Wo Fat's father. The CIA wanted to sound out his political leanings, his potential for working for them. It was difficult because Doris couldn't tip her hand and let on who she was working for. All she could do was try to engage his trust and show an interest in his aspirations. "And I cared about him," she said. "I couldn't help it. He was my son."

A sour feeling roared through Steve' gut because she had to have been 'dead' about a year and by then, he, her legitimate son, was falling apart, alone and bereft with distant relatives in Maryland.

Meanwhile the CIA was growing increasingly concerned about the Yakuza and Wo Ji. They let it be known on the streets that there was a hit out on him by a fictitious entity called Shelburne, in the hope that it would make him pull up the draw bridge and lie low. It worked to a certain extent.

"Wo Ji," Doris looked sad. "He wasn't the man I'd known. He'd gotten hard, ruthless," she sighed, "and dirty."

And suddenly Steve had had enough. He didn't want to hear any more sob stories and bull shit. He thumped the table and leapt to his feet. "So you killed him, right? The CIA said jump. You asked, how high? And then you could and you did?" His eyes were burning and he was having trouble getting his breath.

There was sympathy in Doris' eyes but Steve ignored it. "Succinctly put Steve, but yes."

He stumbled out onto the balcony, semi surprised to find the bright Honolulu afternoon going on around him. Bright sparks of light from the sea stabbed his eyes, tiny needles of pain shot into his brain. He squeezed his eyes shut against them. Fuck, his chest felt tight, he couldn't breathe, couldn't squeeze the air back out.

He contemplated, just for a minute, running forward, putting a foot on the railing and launching himself over it. He'd fly for a moment.

"Steve?" Unsurprisingly it was Catherine who spoke, but he could feel Danny close too. "Steve, are you up to this?"

The hand that landed warm on his shoulder was Danny's and he leant into the touch, suddenly desperate for a hug, to be held, but he was never going to let HER see that. Danny's hand moved up to gently massage the back of his neck. "Breathe with me Babe," Danny said quietly. "Just for a minute." He stepped close, chest against Steve's back and he could feel him breathing. In and out in a steady rhythm that Steve tried to match, soaking in Danny's strength, until he could breathe on his own.

"Okay Babe?" Danny's hand stayed on his neck.

Catherine stood close on the other side and he realised they were shielding him from the view of the people inside, from Doris because, hell, Chin and Kono had seen him in much worse states than this. He reached out to them both, took their hands. "Nearly there," Catherine murmured. "Let her finish and then there'll be no more secrets. You'll know it all and you can let it go."

Steve sincerely doubted that he would be able to let it go anytime soon. There was just too much betrayal, too much hurt from the woman who should have protected him from the world. He stood, pulling in deep, even breaths, blanking his thoughts, pulling up his defences. It was a mission and it was nearly over. He could keep it together for a little while longer. He had the inane thought that it was actually the longest mission of his entire life and when it was done he didn't know what he'd do or if he'd even exist. "Okay." One more deep breath and a squeeze of their hands and he let them go. He wiped a hand over his face, squared his shoulders and turned back into the room. "So how did you get away after you killed Wo Ji?"

Doris had taken a break too, using the bathroom and coming out looking a little damp around the edges. He should have known his mother could still blindside him. She gave him a smug grin as she settled back into her chair. "It was two years before I got orders to kill him. I'd left Shanghai, done other jobs in Taiwan and Japan before the CIA decided Wo Ji had to go. I could get close to him, so I got the job." She gave a smile, at once pained and yet proud. "And then I didn't need to get away. No-one knew it was me. I stayed and helped Wo Fat in the transition while the fictitious Shelburne took the blame."

"You killed your lover and you're proud?"

"Yes Steve. You think it was easy? Of course it wasn't easy but it had to be done. I'm a professional and it was my job. I followed my orders. You should know about that." And yes, sadly Steve did. "Wo Ji wasn't the idealistic young man I'd know. And I never loved him either, if that matters. He was in charge of an operation bringing opium in from Mongolia, processing it and sending heroin on to the States. The child trafficking was still happening. There were murders everywhere you looked. He wasn't a nice man and he was moving into Hawaii. The CIA wanted him gone, but it was getting personal. I couldn't run the risk that he would find out who I really was and take it out on my family. So," she said flatly, "I killed him."

The saying was a cliché, but Steve felt physically sick. He was light headed, cold and nauseous as he tried to get his head around what he was hearing. It was completely different to the operations he'd done, the killings he'd carried out under orders. He had never, ever, had to take down a target he had had a relationship with. Did that make his mother more bad ass, or just more callous than him. "How long did you stay," his mouth twisted around the words, "with your son?"

Doris' look was sympathetic, as if she realised how hard it was for him to think of Wo Fat as her son too. "Only a couple of months. He really wasn't as interested in taking my advice as we'd hoped he would be." She tossed her head. "We parted on reasonable terms though and I moved on. I never actually saw him again until he broke into the safe house here, after you found me." She gave a wry smile. "I think you can understand why I couldn't shoot him, or why he didn't shoot me either."

Steve bit back the comment that wanted to burst out.

The way Doris was looking at him was no doubt supposed to be fond, but he now realised she actually had no empathy at all. Any time it appeared she did, it was an act. Doris spread her hands. "As you can probably guess, I didn't spend the rest of the time I was away sitting on my hands and drinking tea in Japan. I was an active agent for the CIA until two years ago, when they tried to retire me but I managed to talk myself out of it and got a 'consultant trainer' position with the embassy in Hokkaido."

Doris sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. "You were on my trail and I thought, maybe I could retire. I realised I wanted to reconnect with my family. I thought I'd give retirement at go, so I let you find me…" She looked sympathetic. "This is hard for me. I've never shared like this before. This is a one day only offer Steve, so if you want to know something, ask me now." She pressed her finger tips into her temples. "In fact, I think I'm just about done. If you've got something to ask, make it a good."

If Doris was about done, Steve was wiped. But he wasn't finished, not by a long shot. "Joe White?" he asked.

"Ah," Doris said from behind her hands.

"Were you lovers?" Steve leaned forward. "Did he help you disappear?" Doris gave a cold snort of amusement and it pissed him off. "Well?"

"Well?" she parroted back. "Well, yes Steve. And no."

He forced back the urge to strangle her, feeling all his muscles tighten through his chest. "Don't be cute."

"No, he didn't help me disappear. That was all the CIA." She folded her arms and glared at him again. Censuring him for asking questions like that. "But yes, we were lovers, on and off, for the last nine or so years. And," she held up a hand, "before you accuse me of cheating on your father, this didn't start until long after I'd left."

"It was still fucking cheating, Mom," Steve couldn't hold back his anger any more. "You weren't dead, so you were still married."

"Phfft. Don't be naïve. I may not have been dead but our marriage was."

"Dad would have had you back in a heartbeat. He spent his whole life looking for your killers."

"He never knew **me**." Dammit, Doris looked a bit shaky. "He never really had **me**. He had a Stepford wife playing at house." She waved her hands, indicating herself, "He'd have hated the real me." Tears glazed her eyes.

Steve dashed his hand over his own eyes, blinking to clear them. "I hate you," he whispered behind his hand. He was fairly sure she heard him. He needed some deep breaths before he could speak again. "Joe. How did Joe…"

"Joe's been a good friend to me in recent years. He bumped into me in Taiwan, I suppose it was about ten years ago and he knew instantly who I was. There was no way I could talk him into believing I was someone else. I had to get my handlers involved to keep him from broadcasting my existence to the world." She gave a strangled smile. "There may have been some coercion applied, I don't really know. And then, well," and Steve never wanted to see that look on the person he still couldn't stop thinking of as his Mom, "he'd always looked at me in a way that suggested that should I be willing…"

"Stop!" Danny stepped in. "We've got the idea and Steve doesn't need to hear this."

"He wants to know it all," Doris growled. "This is all. Every dirty little detail." She turned back to Steve. "You know what?" and she did look sad, "I'm sorry that you think I'm responsible for all the bad things that have ever happened in your life, but…" she squared her shoulders, "I don't regret what I did. I'm an agent and I served my country. My work kept America, the world, a safer place. There were less drugs in circulation, less children forced into prostitution, less 'bad men'," she gestured, "on the streets, because of what I've done. I loved you and I did my best for you for as long as I could, and then when my country asked me to, I gave you up, you and Mary, and went and did my duty. And I'm fucking proud of that."

Doris sat there like she was expecting a round of applause.

Steve's stomach rolled. It was too much. She was too much.

"I did it," she said, "to keep you safe."

Sweat prickled across the back of his neck and the nausea racked up. Steve swallowed frantically but he couldn't hold it. He bolted for the bathroom and lost the lunch time sandwich and everything he'd eaten for the last week. He should have puked on her shoes.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve was slumped in the passenger seat, arms wrapped tightly around his chest, head turned towards the window. He was still pale and tears glistening on his lashes. Every now and again he shuddered and took an audible, hitching breath.

Danny kept stealing glances at him while biting his tongue. He was not going to be so stupid as to ask Steve if he was all right. Danny was at a complete loss, had no idea what to do to help him. Getting him out of that room and away from everyone, that had been a good idea, but he hadn't had another one since. He wasn't sure if he should be driving Steve home or somewhere else, but in the absence of any other thoughts on the subject, that was where they were going.

"Hey," he finally said when he couldn't stand keeping quiet any more. "None of that, **none** of that changes who you are or the good things you've done in your life. You know that right?"

Steve swallowed, took a breath as though he were going to speak and then panted instead. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"Okay," Danny squeezed his leg, surprised to find Steve's muscles tense under his hand. "We won't talk for a bit, that's fine. Well, you don't have to talk, I'm fine with that, but, you know that I don't work that way don't you? So I'll just prattle away over here all on my own. You okay with that?"

Steve made a snuffing noise that might have been a sign of humour and his breathing evened out, but his leg muscles remained taut, quivering with tension.

"Yeah. Okay." Danny stroked his leg, hoping Steve wasn't going to suddenly decide to vacate the car and make a run for it. "I'm thinking we need to take a vacation. When was the last time we took a vacation, any of us? I mean a real genuine, let's go away for a fortnight and do something completely different, vacation? We could leave tomorrow. Hell, we could leave today, head out to the airport and get on the first international flight. Go to, I don't know, where do planes fly to from here? Sydney, Bangkok, Vancouver? Skiing? Do you ski Steve. You know, I bet you do."

Steve flinched.

"Ha. You don't. Have I finally found something that Super SEAL can't do?" Danny laughed and riffed onto other things Steve probably couldn't do, came back through other holiday destinations and was just winding into a Hawaiian Airways versus Qantas rant, via Dustin Hoffman's performance in Rain Man when they pulled up at the creeper covered picket fence at Casa McGarrett. It was quite a relief to stop. Danny had one hell of a headache.

He turned the engine off and watched Steve brace himself, as if getting out of the car was going to take more energy than he had available. Alarmed Danny put a hand on his arm. "We don't have to be here you know; if you don't want? If you wanted to, we could grab a tent and some decent sleeping mats this time and head back up to your campsite on the hillside. Just tell me what you need?"

"Huh," Steve turned bleary eyes at him, shook his head. "I don't know." He seemed to pull himself together, process things. "You'd really do that for me?" His voice was husky.

"You know I would. What do you want Steve? Where do you want to be?"

"I don't…" He looked around like he was surprised they were actually home." He shrugged. "I feel… odd," he admitted. He levered himself out of the seat. "Don't know what I want." The corner of his mouth lifted in an attempt at a smile, "Think I'm going to get smashed."

He paused at the gate in the fence, the one that couldn't shut because of the rampant growth of some flowering creeper that had anchored it in place years ago. He left his hand on the gate, eyes staring unseeing into the middle distance.

"Babe?"

"I was about four when Dad built this fence. Mary was starting to walk and," Steve shrugged, "I don't know. Someone decided it would be safer if there was a fence with a gate here, even though there's, you know, a beach just over there and they never fenced that. Maybe Mom just thought it would be pretty." He gave a wry grin. "I think I remember helping Dad to build this. There are photos of me with my bucket and spade, helping carry the dirt away from the holes. I don't know if I really do remember now, or if I'm just remembering remembering. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah babe. That makes sense." The thought of little Stevie helping his Dad was unbelievably cute, and poignantly painful. "I'd like to see those pictures some time."

Steve gave him an amused look. "Attic," he grunted, tacitly giving him permission to look. He headed for the house and there was more purpose in his step, a little less deep grief. He fumbled the key and got them inside, leaving Danny to punch in the security code.

Danny caught up with him in the study. Steve'd Steve had snagged a bottle of bourbon, twisted off the top and was drinking straight from the bottle. He swallowed and swallowed again. He'd downed a good third of it before Danny grabbed his arm. "Stop it Steve."

"Fuck off."

Steve took his hand and purposefully removed it from his arm. Danny was suddenly aware of all the menace inherent in the six foot plus of lethally trained, solid muscle that was his partner. He refused to let that realisation show. "Having a hangover isn't going to help you with dealing with tomorrow."

"What's happening tomorrow?"

"Probably a shit storm of fallout from today."

"Point." Steve didn't let go of his hold on Danny's arm. "Noted." He was wound as tight as a spring, even as he paused there like he didn't know what to do next. And he didn't know Danny realised. He was like an over tired toddler who that had got so far beyond its ability to cope that nothing was right and they just didn't know what to do with themselves.

"Like that is it," he murmured.

"What?"

"You my friend need to go do something physical, something that pulls you out of your head and makes you concentrate on nothing but the here and now."

"Really?"

Steve pulled him closer and Danny realised how what he said could have been interpreted. "Yes." Danny put his hand on Steve's chest to keep them apart. Steve's heart was pounding under his palm. "Go rock climbing. You like that. Always said you can't think about anything other than the next hold."

"Can't," Steve backed him up against the wall. "Shoulder." He took another mouthful of booze, gagged slightly and put down the bottle. "Fuck me Danny."

"Shooting. Go out to the military range and play with the big guns."

"Can't," Steve loomed. "Shoulder won't take that either." He rocked his hips against Danny. "Fuck me."

"No Babe, No. That's not what I meant and you know it. Surfing? That does it for you too."

"Fuck me Danno."

"God dammit Steve." Danny tried to push him away and this was just not fair because he wanted Steve. He always wanted Steve.

Steve pushed back. "You said you'd do anything I wanted. Anything I needed. I need you." He ground a solid erection into Danny's hip. "Fuck me hard." He tried for a kiss which was preceded by a wave of bourbon fumes but Danny pulled his head back out of the way. Steve mumbled into his neck, breath moist on Danny's skin. "You don't have to hurt me."

Oh God. No, because heaven forbid, the world hadn't done enough of that. Danny had to stay strong. "We did not break up just because you're a masochist Steve. It's over between us. We don't do this anymore."

Steve leant his full body weight into Danny. Right now Danny was pretty sure Steve would be just as happy to have an all-out fight as a fuck and Danny had no intention of doing either. He just had to hang on. All that bourbon Steve'd Steve had swallowed had to hit his system soon. But Steve played dirty. He grabbed Danny's cock through his pants and Danny had been hard since Steve said fuck me.

"I've changed Danny. Things have changed."

All the self-control in the world couldn't stop him bucking into Steve's hand. And… "Christ." Fighting it was then. "Steven. Stop it." He pushed hard, shoving Steve backwards, following and shoving again until Steve's feet tangled and he went down. He lay there and blinked up at Danny, then suddenly he was up, charging, head down, long arms swinging. Danny ducked, grabbed his wrist and swung him around, planting him face first against the wall. "Stop it Steve."

Steve dropped, twisting down and out of Danny's hold, legs kicking out as he went catching Danny on the shin. Danny howled and was forced to take a swing at Steve as he turned on him, enraged. Then suddenly they were tangled together, throwing punches, some of which connected, kicking and cursing. In a way it was exhilarating. Danny had spent the day wanting to beat the shit out of Doris. This was nearly as good. They raged through the living room, neither really getting the upper hand. Steve had greater reach, Danny slightly lower center of gravity. Danny was sober and Steve was suddenly very drunk. They were wrestling on the floor as much as on their feet. Then Steve's elbow connected with the bridge of Danny's nose, shooting pain through his skull and making him see stars.

"Fuck it Steve." Steve was off his head and there was a possibility he could actually really hurt him now. This had to end. Danny tried a new tactic and went limp, body lax as Steve flipped him and started to reach for his throat. Something, finally, seemed to reconnect in Steve's addled brain, probably just in time.

"Danny? Oh God." Danny played dead as Steve shook him. "Danny?"

And Danny struck, grabbing him and rolling them, pinning Steve underneath him. "Jesus, McGarrett. Give it up." Steve's eyes were completely dark, spaced out. A drop of blood from Danny's nose splashed onto Steve's lip. Danny stared at the perfect round drop, so red, dead center of Steve's pink lower lip. It quivered slightly as Steve breathed. Then Steve's tongue snaked out and licked it off. "Fuck, McGarrett," Steve's body was hard and firm beneath him and Danny had no resistance left. He crashed his mouth onto Steve's, kissing deep and desperate and Steve answered in kind.

Their wrestling was equally frantic now, but now they were trying to climb inside each other, devour each other. Clothes were torn in a desperate attempt to get closer, skin to heated, sweaty skin.

Steve was frantic, bucking up against him. "God Danny. Missed you Danny."

"Please tell me you have supplies?" Danny finally got his hand on Steve's prick, making him jerk and gasp.

"Upstairs."

"Okay." That was good really. Danny's knees would thank him later. "Up. Now." He stumbled up, pulling Steve to his feet and yanking his pants up enough to let him walk at the same time. Steve grabbed for him and pulled him into another bruising kiss as they staggered to the stairs. Danny hadn't felt so aroused since the early days, when he and Steve had first got together. "Bed. Fuck Steve… Gonna explode."

"Jesus. Danny." But Steve moved.

They crashed together onto the bed, pants shoved down enough for access. "On your knees," Danny ordered as Steve flung a tube of lube at him. "Condoms?"

"Shit." Steve scrabbled through his bedside cabinet. "Here," he said with relief, pulling one out and sagging face down onto the bed. "Fuck," he mumbled into the coverlet. "Don't use them with Cath."

"Steve!" Danny was half way through the process of rolling the thing on, his prick so tight he thought he might come before he even got near Steve. "Shit. Etiquette. Do want to get fucked or shall I just shoot you in the head? Because right now I think it could go either way."

Steve groaned.

"Up." Danny grabbed at his hips. "Get your ass in the air." He slapped the tight butt cheek in front of his hand. Hard. "Fucking now."

Steve cried out, his normal stoicism lost somewhere in the storm of alcohol running through his system. He struggled to rise to his hands and knees, partially trapped by Danny kneeling on his pants which were caught around his ankles. 'Of for fuck's sake." Danny shimmied sideways. "Hold on a sec." He yanked at Steve's boots, flinging them across the room, then yanked his pants down over his feet. "Now get your ass up."

Steve did, raising himself on wobbly arms. Danny put a hand on his back and shoved his head and shoulders back down on the bed. Steve laughed, raising his hips in the air and spreading his legs, laughing and laughing. He was ready and waiting and oh God, Danny was doomed. He'd always been doomed, he just hadn't realised it. How the hell had he managed to resist this. "Steve," he whispered.

"Danny, please."

"I'm here Baby. I'm here." Fingers shaking a little Danny dribbled lube down the crack in Steve's ass and rubbed it in, pushing his fingers in and out, forcing entrance into Steve's body as Steve went NUTS underneath him. Steve was rocking back against him, whining and gasping.

"Are you ready Baby? God I'm ready?"

"Do it. Danny please."

So Danny did. He lined his prick up and he pushed straight in to that tight hot opening that was Steve.

"Danny." Steve writhed and bucked back against him, wanting, demanding so much. "God Danny." His hips rocked, taking so much.

Fuck, Danny wanted this, wanted Steve. Loved Steve and hated him. Hated him for making him want this when he thought he'd given it away. Anger fuelled his lust and he shoved a hand down on the back of Steve's neck, pressing his head into the bedcovers, smothering him and not giving a damn as he rode his hot sweet ass.

Steve took it like the masochistic slut he was. He writhed and shook and rocked his hips back onto Danny's prick. Then Steve was coming, with no touch to his cock, his body convulsing with the strength of his orgasm, the muscle spasms in his ass nearly painful on Danny's prick as they pulled him into a mind blanking release of his own.

He had the fore thought to fall away from Steve as he collapsed, to let him breathe before he smothered for real. He flung the condom blindly in the direction of the bin, then closed his eyes and let the world go away for a while, his body loose and swimming in hormones, after-shocks rippling through his abs and affecting his breathing.

Reality asserted itself in the worst possible way. Eye-watering pain startled him awake as a flailing hand connected with his sore nose. He lay there, gasping as Steve flung himself off the bed, got his feet tangled in the discarded clothing on the floor and crashed into the door frame. He caromed bounced of it, fell to his hands and knees and then Danny heard him violently throwing up in the hallway, obviously not making it to the bathroom in time.

Danny's mouth was sour with old blood and Steve's sound effects did nothing for his own equilibrium. He waited until the noises stopped before getting up. His pants were still tangled around his ankles and he pulled his boxers up and kicked the trousers off. He could see golden streaks of the sky from the windows. Just on sunset. They'd probably only been asleep half an hour at most. It was going to be dark soon. And the bourbon had obviously caught up with Steve.

What a difference an hour made. Steve was naked and on his hands and knees, but there was nothing erotic about the sight; not with the line of drool connecting his lip to the puddle of sick on the floor. Steve was panting, dry heaving as the spasms subsided. There were bruises blooming on his ribs and his legs, signs that Danny had given as good as he'd got in their fight earlier. He was quite pleased about that. He felt insanely angry about the whole situation. "I want you to know that I am not cleaning that up."

It wasn't just an hour. This time yesterday Steve had been sleeping in his bivouac while Danny watched the sunset up on the mountain. It felt like weeks ago.

He shut the bathroom door and took a piss and it was only then that he turned around and saw himself in the mirror. "Shit." He touched his nose gently. He had the most perfect pair of black panda eyes he'd seen in a long time. "Jesus, McGarrett." He leant his forehead on the cool mirror. It was good to know it looked as bad as it felt.

Pulling himself together he fossicked rummaged through the cupboard and found Tylenol and Ibuprofen. After a moment's thought he took two of each. Then he took Steve's toothbrush and brushed his teeth, they'd shared enough spit earlier to make it no big deal. "God," Danny muttered at his reflection. "What a fucking mess. Why do you do this to me? Why do I do this to me?" He raked his hand through his hair, trying to straighten it. "What the fuck am I going to do about Steve?"

Right now he couldn't face doing anything about Steve so he took a shower instead. It wasn't like he didn't need one. He too had interesting bruises on his torso and he didn't remember it, but he seemed to have a bite mark on his chest, just below his left nipple.

Coming back out, wrapped in a towel, he found Steve ineffectually wiping at the floor with a rag. Most of the mess was at least hidden under it. He looked up, eyes still blown and spacy. He had at least gone back and put his boxers on.

"Danny?" His voice was slurred

"Are you feeling better now?"

"Bits of me are." Steve tried to give a lascivious grin and wiggle his ass. But that upset his balance and he nearly face planted into the muck.

Danny sighed. "Good," he said coldly. "Pleased to be of service."

"Danny?" And fuck, Steve was terrified. And drunk. He sat back, feeling his way and leaning against the wall, his head rolling back. "Are you mad at me? Are you sorry we did it?"

"Yes Steven. Yes I am sorry we did it. And no Steven. I'm mad at me." He looked down at Steve mostly naked and somehow terribly vulnerable. In the dim light the tattoos and scars he wore faded into his skin color leaving him untouched and so beautiful. "I thought I had more respect for myself than to do this." He waved his hand to encompass Steve, himself, the whole situation. "I can't… Steven I can't do this. I can't do casual sex. Not with you. Especially not with you."

Steve groaned, burying his head in his hands. "Danny…"

"When did you ask Cath to marry you?" Steve looked up at him confused. "What?

"Doris got you to confess that Cath had turned you down. Remember?"

Danny shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have reminded him about Doris. Steve shuddered, moaned. "Months ago. Ages ago. Why?"

"But you didn't break up?"

"Not then."

"But you have though, haven't you? You've broken up with her." Because Danny was putting a few things together, including the fact that there were no women's products in the bathroom and the far side bedside cabinet in the bedroom held nothing except a box of tissues.

Steve sounded so tired. "She lied to me Danny."

"Oh Steve."

"About Doris. She knew stuff." Steve curled tighter, head between his knees.

"She knew about Wo Fat?"

"No. Not that." Steve gagged, took a minute to get his stomach under control. "Jesus." He sniffed, wiped his nose on the back of his hand. "I'm sure she didn't know that."

"Babe," Danny slid down beside him. His breath could strip paint and his skin was clammy but Danny pulled him in against his chest. "I'm sure she didn't know. She was as shocked as any of us."

Steve took a shaky breath, close to losing it completely. "It was some stuff about Doris' CIA background, some targets she'd been after. God, nothing like that. But I couldn't…"

"Couldn't what Babe?"

"Couldn't trust her."

"That's ridiculous. You know that? Cath loves you. She's completely loyal to you."

Steve folded in against him.

"Shit." Danny was exhausted. Steve had to be completely wrecked. He'd just had the most horrendously emotional day. "Shit." And it was only just over an hour since he'd swallowed enough alcohol to knock out a horse. This really wasn't the time to get into relationship issues. "Don't cry on me Steve. Please don't cry." Danny gathered him in closer, held him tight. "I hate it when you do that. You know that right? It's just not a good look on you." He extricated himself and got to his feet. "Come on partner. Back to bed. We can have this discussion tomorrow."

Danny put him to bed then got dressed himself. He cleaned the hallway, checked in with Kono, made himself a meal of sorts and watched TV for several hours. Then, in spite of all his sensible instincts screaming at him that it was a bad idea, he had gone upstairs, taken more tylenolTylenol and climbed into bed beside Steve. Someone had to make sure he didn't vomit in his sleep and aspirate. Steve never stirred. Steve probably never knew he was there.

Steve threw up twice more in the night, both times managing to mostly make the bucket that Danny had placed beside the bed.

Bourbon must work as a hell of a sedative, or else Steve was simply exhausted, but when Danny woke around seven Steve was still completely out to it. Danny lay there for a few minutes watching him sleep, beautiful eyelashes spread over his cheeks. He had a deep purple bruise on his jaw.

He conjured up an image of Wo Fat and tried to overlay his features on to Steve. Okay, there might be something across the eye brows, the cheek bones, but Wo Fat's jaw line was square, Steve's longer. Steve's nose was long and elegant, the other man's broader and flatter. Wo Fat was a good looking man; Danny could admit that, even though he thought of him with nothing but loathing. Now that Danny knew, Wo Fat definitely didn't look full blooded Asian, but he didn't look related to Steve either. That, he supposed, was a small mercy. Mind you, even if they'd looked like twins, he doubted anyone would have suspected the truth and Doris certainly hadn't been about to let on about it. If Steve hadn't done that DNA search he might never have known.

Doris was a real piece of work. It did Danny's head in to think of how much hurt Steve had lived through in his life, and nearly all of it was because of her. But hopefully now, now it should be over.

"Oh Babe." He leant over and gave him a gentle kiss on the forehead. He wasn't going to kiss his mouth, not with breath that rank. Then Danny got up to start the coffee and get ready to face the day.

Epilogue.

When Steve finally woke up, following his alcoholic binge, the day after he learnt the whole truth from his mother, everything seemed too much. He was severely hung over, far too tired and completely unable to cope with the world. He burst into tears when he thought about how his parents had used to sleep in this very room and after a trip to the bathroom, climbed back into bed hoping the world would go away. He proceeded to do nothing except lie curled in his bed and cry for the next three days.

On the second day he had to admit to Danny that he thought he might have lost it completely and he just couldn't seem to stop crying. Every thought he had seemed to be so sad. He was more than a little frightened by his inability to pull himself together. He was pretty sure Danny was worried about it too.

On the third day Danny called a team meeting and Chin and Kono and Catherine too came and they had the meeting in Steve's bedroom, sitting on and around his bed, even though Steve vehemently told Danny that he didn't want anyone to see him like this. Danny however told him, that he thought that Steve needed to know, that the people that loved him, loved him even when he wasn't being a hero. But Steve had never thought of himself as a hero anyway and he hated it and spent the whole time they were there trying to burrow deeper under his covers and curl into a smaller ball.

From the meeting Steve learnt that Doris was settled into her new digs and her security was robust. She wanted him to come see her as soon as he felt able. Five 0 had had a busy week with teenagers and a toxic version of artificial marijuana putting people in hospital but they were on top of it now. The meeting then decided that Steve needed to see a psychiatrist and Steve was forced to give up the information that he was already seeing a shrink on Base on a reasonably regular schedule. Danny made an emergency appointment for him for that afternoon.

Danny and Cath had some awkward conversation over Steve's head that involved just their eyes and seemed to mean that Danny was now in charge of Steve's care and maintenance. It was a little insulting.

Danny made him have a shower and get dressed.

Dr Aldridge seemed a little disconcerted when Steve wouldn't let go of Danny's hand and dragged him into the Doctor's office with him. Or maybe it was Danny's black eyes and the bruise on Steve's jaw. Maybe it was the way Steve was a snivelling wreck with blotchy eyes and a swollen face and a pile of tissues wadded up in his hand. If Danny hadn't been there Steve didn't think the doctor would have been able to work out what was wrong with him because Steve was completely incapable of explaining.

Dr Aldridge diagnosed acute stress disorder and determined that Steve was not psychotic and not a danger to himself or others. The crying would stop when it stopped, Steve was simply emotionally exhausted. As the doctor colloquially explained it, the rubber band had finally snapped. Steve needed to rest and he needed, as much as possible, a break from the stress causing the problem. He needed TLC and feeding up and when he felt a little better, some exercise. He was on indefinite medical leave and the doctor agreed with Danny that the vacation he'd been joking about was a very good idea.

There was a little bottle of drops, two or three to be taken on his tongue, just to take the edge off things if he really needed them. Steve determined never to take them.

Back in the car Steve breathed easier and loosened his grip on Danny's hand. He was so out of control of his emotions and so obviously, he thought, mentally unwell, he'd been convinced the doctor had been going to admit him.

They went home and Steve went back to bed, burrowing back under the covers and sobbing again, but this time in relief. In their absence someone had been in, changed the sheets and aired the room.

Ten days later Danny, Grace and a still fragile Steve flew out for Aspen, Colorado. It wasn't overseas but it was different. Steve and Grace would be taking ski lessons together while Danny regained his skills elsewhere on the mountain and no doubt whizzed past them and laughed now and again. Steve was finally able to let go of Danny's hand and was looking forward to it. He could surf. This couldn't be too much harder. And he'd have Grace with him. When they were packing for their holiday Steve realised that sometime in the past ten days, while he hadn't been looking, Danny had moved in.

Three days later on a Thursday, high on a mountain in brilliant sunshine and crisp cold air, Steve and Grace executed a perfect run, skidding to nearly perfectly controlled stops in front of a grinning Danny. They all high fived and fell into a hug. Skis tangled and they ended up in a laughing heap in the snow. They laughed and laughed and hugged some more. The last of the black fog seemed to lift off Steve's chest. He felt whole and happy again.

Danny was looking at him fondly. "Okay Babe?"

"Yeah." Steve smiled. He'd have kissed him if Grace wasn't lying between them. "Very all right." He staggered back upright. He still hadn't quite got the hang of getting up again. "Next year I'm trying a snow board. I'm sure it's more like surfing." He winked at Grace. "Grace and I were thinking. We're pretty good at this now. It's time for a race."

Danny's face broke into that calculating smile that Steve knew so well. "A race huh? A race between you two and me?" He had to haul Grace back onto her skis. "And what would be a suitable prize for the winner?"

"Hot chocolate," Grace answered. It was her new favourite thing. "With cream and real chocolate sprinkles."

Steve met Danny's eyes. "I've already got my prize."

Danny's smile grew wider. "Okay then," he said, leading off towards the lift. "Racing for hot chocolate it is."


End file.
